Agricultural Value Chain Management

The term value chain is broadly defined as the full range of activities that are required to bring a product (or a service) from conception through the different phases of production to delivery to final consumers and disposal after use. Value chain analysis is the process of breaking a chain into its constituent parts in order to better understand its structure and functioning. The analysis consists of identifying chain actors at each stage and discerning their functions and relationships; determining the chain governance, or leadership, to facilitate chain formation and strengthening; and identifying value adding activities in the chain and assigning costs and added value to each of those activities. By going beyond the traditional narrow focus on production, value chain analysis overcomes several important limitations of traditional sector assessments which tend to ignore the dynamic linkages with and among productive activities that occur outside the particular sector under assessment or involve informal operations. Value chain management focuses on improving business operations at the level of producers, processors and other actors in the chain and/or the (contractual) relationships among them, flow of knowledge and information and innovation. Value chain development can also foster overall coordination in the chain; participation of selected beneficiaries in local, national or global value chains; reduction of entry barriers and a higher share of value addition for certain actors. The objective of this course is to better understand all aspects of agriculture value chains.