Poverty chains and global capitalism

Agriculture, food and global value chains: issues, methods and challenges

Recent studies on the global value chain (GVC) have highlighted the need to better integrate the value chains of developing countries of the global South with that of the global North regions, which are more highly developed. This is aimed at enhancing the economic and social sustainable upgrading of the value chains of the global South regions. The paper thus seeks to answer a critical question as to whether the existing GVC set-up pertaining to global North and South countries is equitable and whether it would yield the needed socio-economic and wider sustainable benefits, particularly to global South countries. a conceptual Global Value Chain (GVC) model is developed based on the economy-wide and system-based Multi-Regional Input–Output methodology to achieve this goal. Subsequently, this was empirically tested to measure embodied flows in capital and labour for sustainable development between global North and South regions. These are achieved using the GVC networks of the UK (from the global North) and some countries in sub-Saharan Africa (from the global South) to exemplify these developments. With implications for equitable, sustainable development, our study shows significant imbalances exist in the flows of value added activities from the global South to the global North, particularly in the primary industries, which produce low-value products in their raw state. Subsequently, this creates a disproportionate economic disadvantage for South countries. As such, if global South countries are to fully benefit from GVC, the study shows that these imbalances must be addressed, such as through structural changes in the economies of global South countries from their dependencies on the primary industries.

Global value chain (GVC) analysis and supply chain management (SCM) research have been following parallel paths of development. However, they share the same premises: the fragmented and global nature of production chains and the importance of interaction across actors for innovation and competitiveness. While GVC analysis follows a more holistic and global approach, SCM provides a more nuanced view on company strategies and the processes that ultimately shape governance and upgrading in GVCs. Consequently, this chapter first establishes the common ground between the two disciplines and then presents how selected concepts from these different branches of literature can be combined, with a special focus on how to better understand the concept of upgrading. The chapter ends with a discussion of potential areas of joint investigation for SCM and GVC scholars, including the impact of new technologies and platforms, the dynamics of reshoring and relocation, and the evaluation of risks in complex and multi-country supply chains.

Temporary resource availability and quality constraints in the global leather value chain – The impact of the festival of sacrifice on the leather industry in Bangladesh

Countering Overseas Power in Global Value Chains: Information Asymmetries and Subcontracting in the Plastics Industry

During the last decades the role of the state in governance of Global Value Chains (GVC) for sustainability has been largely ignored. This paper contributes to the re‐centering the state in GVC analysis. We provide an analysis of the rise and fall of the Indonesian Palm Oil Pledge (IPOP). IPOP is a commitment of some biggest palm oil companies towards zero‐deforestation in Indonesia, but was dissolved after serious critique from the Government of Indonesia (GoI). Our question is: why and how did the GoI decide to put an end to the IPOP? We show that the GoI orchestrated the IPOP's demise by framing it as a danger to smallholder development, as not acknowledging public standards, and as an illegal cartel. The GoI's counter‐framing re‐asserts its sovereignty over producers, rule‐making and economic organization. We argue that when a state perceives that when non‐state‐driven GVC governance threatens its sovereignty over producers, rule‐making and economic organization, it will engage in discursive power struggle with non‐state actors. More specifically, collective action of non‐state actors can particularly trigger a state to engage in discursive power struggle with non‐state actors.

Global value chain (GVC) analysis has been developed to understand the changing nature of global production and distribution processes, but it has not been widely adopted by sociologists to understand the implications of globalization for work, employment and the levers for upgrading labour conditions. To understand the extent to which insertion in GVCs creates opportunities for the upgrading of labour and skills, it is necessary to consider the influence of national institutions, alongside internationally dispersed relationships between companies in different parts of the value chain. By examining the production of farmed salmon in Chile, the article explores the interactions between national institutions for innovation and skills development and locally based producers’ insertion in the global value chain.

The rise of global value chains (GVCs) has been associated with the rapid expansion of outsourcing by lead firms in the global North to interlinked networks of cross-border suppliers in developing countries. Outsourcing was facilitated by trade and financial liberalization initiated in the 1970s and 1980s, and driven by intense competitive pressures for cost reduction. GVC and global production network (GPN) analysis provide crucial insights into inter-firm coordination and governance, with diverse and uneven embeddedness across an expanding range of countries (Coe and Yeung, 2015; Dicken et al., 2001; Gereffi et al., 2001, 2005). The consequences for suppliers and workers have been mixed. The search for cost reduction went hand in hand with entry into relatively unregulated environments leading to what Appelbaum et al. (2005) have called ‘the race to the bottom’ in many industries. At the same time, buyer pressure for product quality and consistency has increased the demands on suppliers to comply with private standards and monitoring (Nadvi, 2008). For some the outcome has led to a combination of economic upgrading (suppliers moving to higher value activities) and social upgrading (better terms and conditions for workers), while others have experienced economic and social downgrading (Barrientos et al., 2011a; Lee and Gereffi, 2015). Global outsourcing has led to the creation of new architectures for the organization of production, trade and consumption in the global economy. Today multilateral organizations (including the WTO, World Bank and OECD) have acknowledged that GVCs have reshaped traditional trading patterns between nations. UNCTAD (2013) estimates that 80% of world trade now passes through GVCs. Furthermore the developing country share in global value-added trade increased from 20% in 1990 to over 40% today, and GVC participation contributes 28% to their GDP on average. Global production has opened up new opportunities for employment to millions of workers in developing countries. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that in 2013, 453 million jobs were GVC

The goal of this paper is twofold: to comparatively analyze the social performance of global and local berry supply chains and to explore the ways in which the social dimension is embedded in the overall performance of food supply chains. To achieve this goal, the social performance of five global and local food supply chains in two countries are analyzed: wild blueberry supply chains in Latvia and cultivated raspberry supply chains in Serbia. The study addresses two research questions: (1) What is the social performance of the local and global supply chains? (2) How can references to context help improve understanding of the social dimension and social performance of food supply chains? To answer these questions, two interlinked thematic sets of indicators (attributes) are used—one describing labor relations and the other describing power relations. These lists are then contextualized by examining the micro-stories of the actors involved in these supply chains. An analysis of the chosen attributes reveals that global chains perform better than local chains. However, a context-sensitive analysis from the perspective of embedded markets and communities suggests that the social performance of food chains is highly context-dependent, relational, and affected by actors’ abilities to negotiate values, norms, and the rules embedded within these chains, both global and local. The results illustrate that the empowerment of the chains’ weakest actors can lead to a redefining of the meanings that performance assessments rely on.

In this paper, the Global Value Chain approach is used to analyse the organic and fair-trade production of cotton in Mali and Burkina Faso. Two issues are raised: what are the producers' advantages to produce organic cotton? Does it offer greater opportunities to create local added value? We compare the evolution of the respective profitability of the two global value chains in Mali and Burkina Faso. We point out the vulnerabilities related to the mode of governance of the organic and fair-trade GVC due among other factors to the weakness of yields, the narrowness of the market, the dependency on bailouts and the support of the NGOs and eventually to missing perspectives of local transformation.

Overseas operations, global value chain position and technological innovation

Superior Bargaining Power and the Global Food Value Chain: The Wuthering Heights of Holistic Competition Law?

The differences between the countries of the 'Global North' and those of the 'Global South' are clear in various fields, namely sociocultural fields, due to unequal wealth distribution and its consequent economic inequalities. But to what extent can the phenomenon of urbanization join these two worlds that seem so far apart? Considering the rapid urbanization of several cities in the Global South today, compared with the stabilized rate of urbanization in the Global North, information sharing would be beneficial and the Global North may provide guidance to those rapidly growing cities presently undergoing the process of urbanization. Such a transmission of knowledge could be achieved through cooperation between social institutions, such as universities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and social actors, such as public decision-makers. Editors Agostino Petrillo and Paola Bellaviti, in their book Sustainable Urban Development and Globalization: New Strategies for New Challenges, present a number of practical examples from around the world of such cooperation between the Global North and Global South.. This review presents a general summary of the book, as well as an evaluation of its possible contribution to the field of urban sociology.

Purpose This article unveils the governance dynamics of a frontier region for global value chains (GVCs). For this purpose, we developed a replicable methodology to analyze the interaction between public policies and the governance of GVCs to better assess sustainability impacts and business responses. We apply this methodology to understand the governance dynamics in the beef cattle GVC in the Brazilian Amazon. In Brazil, cattle ranching increasingly concentrates in the Amazon region, notably in the state of Pará, becoming the major driver of deforestation as public policies and law enforcement are ineffective. Using our methodology, we were able to identify the main weaknesses in governance pertaining to sustainability in the beef GVC. Design/methodology/approach The methodology employed a case study approach and utilized GVC mapping and analysis using primary (semi-structured interviews and site visits) and secondary data sources. The governance structures along the GVC were characterized. Finally, the sustainability and upgrading within and beyond the GVC were analyzed. Findings Based on our methodology, emerging beef GVCs, such as those in Santarém, Pará State, primarily supply the domestic market without external pressures to improve sustainability. This fact coupled with a lack of local capacity to implement public policies presents challenges for sustainable governance. Efforts to enhance the performance of the value chain predominantly stem from private sector capacity-building initiatives targeting ranchers. Originality/value Through the development of our method, the governance of the Brazilian beef GVC in the Amazon is mapped and analyzed. This study introduces a novel sustainability-focused GVC mapping methodology aimed at establishing a standardized framework to enhance the comparability of research. As a result, this study offers useful theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on the sustainability of GVCs in frontier regions where public governance capacity is low.

As global value chain practices continue to spread worldwide, concerns about competitiveness emerge within prevailing policies, emphasizing long-term productivity and attractiveness. Indonesian South Sea pearls embody both economic potential and challenges affecting their bargaining power. This research aims to present a comprehensive overview of the Indonesian government's efforts to enhance south sea pearl’s competitiveness. Utilizing global value chain analysis, it explores the policies implemented by both central and local authorities to enhance the pearl industry's competitiveness, investigating their impact on company governance and upgrading practices through a focused case study on NMJ LLC. Results underscore substantial strides where the central government establishes legal foundations and enhances South Sea pearls quality. While the local government focuses on improving productivity in both downstream and upstream sectors. Additionally, both levels of government facilitate platforms for global market access. Moreover, the NMJ LLC case study analysis underscores policy implementation’s influence on its governance and upgrading, classified as retail buyer-driven value chain governance and product upgrading, respectively.