Enhancing Value Chain Innovation Through Collective Action: Lessons from the Andes, Africa, and Asia

Collective action approaches plays a significant role in solving marketing problems like providing the remunerative price of the product, eliminates the intermediaries from the agriculture value chain, and enhance the direct marketing between farmers and consumers. In these references, a new collective action approach being popularised in India i.e., farmer producer company. So, it is important to study the socio-economic characteristics of dairy farmers, motivational factors, and the reasons behind joining the FPCs. Hence a study was conducted from January 2020 at the three states i.e. Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh of India to investigate the socio-economic profile, motivational factors, and the reasons behind joining the FPCs among farmers. Primary data was collected through a semi-structured interview schedule using a sample of 360 farmers selected from twelve dairy-based FPCs of three states. Data were analyzed through frequency, range, and percentage. It was found that most farmers were middle-aged, possess small landholding, educated up to graduate level. The most important reason behind taking the membership of FPCs was to enhance the family income through FPCs, better price realization by FPCs, and quick payment settlement. Due to the above reasons, most of the farmers want to join FPCs in study areas. The result of the present study helps to enhance the membership of farmer Producer Company through formulating a suitable strategy that should attract the farmer to joining the farmer producer company. This also helps to identify the motivation sources and their credibility among farmers for convincing them for joining FPCs. It was also found that the participation of farmers in dairy-based farmer producer companies is largely dependent on the socio-economic characteristics of the dairy farmers.

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Toward Sustainability of South African Small-Scale Fisheries Leveraging ICT Transformation Pathways

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12020743 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 743

Author(s):

Tsele T. Nthane ◽

Fred Saunders ◽

Gloria L. Gallardo Fernández ◽

Serge Raemaekers

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

South African ◽

Value Chain ◽

Small Scale ◽

Power Parity ◽

Ongoing Research ◽

Small Scale Fisheries ◽

Participatory Workshop ◽

Transformation Pathways ◽

Institutional Sustainability

Though Internet and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have been employed in small-scale fisheries (SSFs) globally, they are seldom systematically explored for the ways in which they facilitate equality, democracy and sustainability. Our study explored how ICTs in South African small-scale fisheries are leveraged towards value chain upgrading, collective action and institutional sustainability—key issues that influence small-scale fishery contributions to marine resource sustainability. We held a participatory workshop as part of ongoing research in the town of Lambert’s Bay, South Africa, in collaboration with small-scale fishers and the Abalobi ICT project. We mapped fisher value chain challenges and explored the role of ICT-driven transformation pathways, adopting Wright’s ‘Real Utopian’ framework as the lens through which to explore equality, democracy and institutional sustainability. We found Abalobi’s ICT platform had the potential to facilitate deeper meanings of democracy that incorporate socio-economic reform, collective action and institutional sustainability in South Africa’s small-scale fisheries. Where fishers are not engaged beyond passive generators of data, this had the potential to undermine the goals of increasing power parity between small-scale fisheries and other stakeholders.

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A Relational Approach to Studying Collective Action in Dairy Cooperatives Producing Mountain Cheeses in the Alps: The Case of the Primiero Cooperative in the Eastern Italians Alps

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su12114596 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (11) ◽

pp. 4596

Author(s):

Carine Pachoud ◽

Etienne Delay ◽

Riccardo Da Re ◽

Maurizio Ramanzin ◽

Enrico Sturaro

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Value Chain ◽

Price Competition ◽

Economic Status ◽

High Capacity ◽

Mountain Areas ◽

Mountain Area ◽

Relational Approach ◽

Trust And Reciprocity ◽

Local Actors

Compared with more productive areas, mountain areas are at risk of being marginalized, particularly in the agri-food sector. To circumvent price competition, local actors in the mountains can develop specialized local products, which depends on their capacity to act collectively. Collective action, however, is complex and needs to be better understood if it is to steer initiatives towards success. This article sets out a relational approach to studying collective action in a dairy cooperative located in a mountain area: The Primiero cooperative in the Italian Alps. The common pool resources and territorial proximity frameworks were combined in a social network analysis of advice interactions among producer members, and an analysis of trust and conflict among members and between members and other actors involved in the value chain. The results show that the success of collective action can be explained by various complementary factors. Firstly, members had dense relationships, with high levels of trust and reciprocity, while the president had the role of prestige-based leader. Nonetheless, the analysis also highlighted conflicts related to the production levels of “traditional” and “intensive” producers, although members demonstrated a high capacity to resolve conflicts by creating their own rules to control further intensification. Socio-economic status did not appear to play a role in advice relationships, showing that the members interact horizontally. However, the results show that the geographical isolation of some members tended to inhibit their commitment to the collective dynamics. At a higher level, trust toward other actors involved in the value chain plays a central role in carrying out joint projects to develop and promote cheese.

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Assessing farmer involvement in collective action for enhancing the sorghum value chain in Soroti, Uganda

South African Journal of Agricultural Extension (SAJAE) ◽

10.17159/2413-3221/2017/v45n1a444 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 45 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Ekepu D. ◽

Tirivanhu P. ◽

Nampala P.

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Value Chain

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Building fisheries institutions through collective action in Norway

Maritime Studies ◽

10.1007/s40152-018-0088-6 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 13-25 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Svein Jentoft ◽

Bjørn-Petter Finstad

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Value Chain ◽

Historical Context ◽

Small Scale ◽

Poverty Eradication ◽

Basic Principles ◽

International Financial Crisis ◽

The World ◽

Sales Organizations ◽

Raw Fish

AbstractInstitutions, and the collective action that created them and which they enable, can play an important role in poverty eradication. In Norway, the Raw Fish Act passed in 1938 in the aftermath of the international financial crisis that hit the fishing industry hard, and the fishers’ cooperative sales-organizations that it authorized testify to this. Most of all, they helped to empower fishers in their economic transactions throughout the value chain. Since the RFA’s enactment, it has undergone reform that has somewhat changed the mandate of the sales-organizations, but the basic principles and functions remain. Although the historical context and institutional designs of the Raw Fish Act and the cooperative sales-organizations that it mandated, are unique, together they addressed a problem that small-scale fishers are experiencing in other parts of the world - one of poverty, marginalization and exploitation. The Raw Fish Act and the system of mandated, cooperative sales-organizations radically altered this predicament and turned the table in fishers’ favor. The question, therefore, is what lessons do the Norwegian example offer that might be emulated elsewhere?

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Stakeholder roles for fostering ambidexterity in Sub-Saharan African agricultural netchains for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives

Journal on Chain and Network Science ◽

10.3920/jcns2014.0007 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 16 (1) ◽

pp. 59-82 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

S.A. Pérez Perdomo ◽

A. Farrow ◽

J.H. Trienekens ◽

S.W.F. Omta

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Value Chain ◽

Economies Of Scale ◽

Agricultural Sector ◽

Smallholder Farmers ◽

Innovation Process ◽

Innovation Networks ◽

Exploration And Exploitation ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

Multi Stakeholder

The Sub-Saharan African smallholder agricultural sector faces multiple and usually complex challenges, which can potentially be overcome by collective action. Smallholder farmers and other value chain stakeholders can tackle temporal, structural and contextual challenges by joining multi-level innovation networks to benefit collectively from shared information, knowledge, improved capacities and economies of scale in a process of innovation. Ambidexterity is a capability of innovation networks to balance exploration and exploitation dynamics in an innovation process, and is applicable at multiple levels: individuals, leaders, champions, teams and clusters. In the paradigm of open innovation, these levels become intertwined in hybrid social structures of innovation netchains. The objective of this paper is to describe the roles and identify the stakeholders that play those roles in an innovation process. We present case studies on farmer groups who participate in collective action and we compare multi-stakeholder platforms with other configurations of actors that tackle challenges in potato netchains in three Sub-Saharan African countries. We track and analyse innovation trajectories for six cases adapting netchain analysis techniques linking roles with the challenges faced at particular stages of each innovation trajectory. We find three management designs for fostering exploration and exploitation: (1) exploratory or exploitative management designs for small innovation networks; (2) exploitative management designs for larger networks; and (3) ambidextrous management designs for multi-stakeholder networks. Traditional roles played by managers are identified to manage exploration and exploitation in an ambidextrous way, but also evidence of roles of civil society actors facilitating collective action for the emergence of multi-stakeholder cooperatives. Since ambidexterity is about dynamism, we identified three types of mobility to be fostered when tackling challenges in an innovation process: (1) mobility-dynamism of the innovation process over time; (2) structural-knowledge mobility in innovation networks; and (3) boundary mobility.

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Value Chain Dynamics et Impact of Collective Action on Smallholder Livelihood Improvement in Kenya

10.20868/upm.thesis.44628 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Sarah Mutonyi

Keyword(s):

Collective Action ◽

Value Chain ◽

Chain Dynamics ◽

Livelihood Improvement

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