S. Vellema | Wageningen University (original) (raw)

Papers by S. Vellema

ABSTRACT Bij investeringen in de landbouwsector in ontwikkelingslanden zijn multinationale ondern... more ABSTRACT Bij investeringen in de landbouwsector in ontwikkelingslanden zijn multinationale ondernemingen centrale spelers. Dit artikel bespreekt recente trends in de internationalisering van de landbouwsector en onderzoekt de voorwaarden waaronder deze internationalisering bij kan dragen aan duurzame groei in ontwikkelingslanden

The global food security agenda emphasizes increased production in agriculture to ensure availabi... more The global food security agenda emphasizes increased production in agriculture to ensure availability of food. This chapter shifts attention away from a purely production-based solution, to what happens after production, namely making food available via different trade channels. Our argument challenges two binary thought lines underlying intervention strategies and policies adopting a market-led approach towards food availability in the Sub-Saharan African context. Firstly, the informal nature of commercial transactions is considered to hinder provision of food in rural and urban markets; forging contracts and formalization are proposed as antidote. Secondly, constrained availability of food is related to imperfections and institutional voids that can be addressed by inducing novel arrangements and promoting collective marketing via cooperatives. The consequences of both strategies are shortened agri-food chains and exclusion of skillful practices of intermediary traders. Case studi...

IDS Bulletin, 2014

Sustainability standards and certification schemes have been promoted as a market-driven instrume... more Sustainability standards and certification schemes have been promoted as a market-driven instrument for realising development impacts and receive public funding. As a result, companies, NGOs and supporting donors and governments want to know if these ambitions have been fulfilled. Their tendency is to commission household surveys to assess net effects of certification in areas such as poverty, productivity and food security. This article argues that, rather than trying to measure precise net effects on farmer income, the focus should be on detailed measurement of more immediate outcomes in terms of knowledge and implementation of good agricultural practices. Contribution analysis is proposed as an overall approach to verify the theory of change, combining survey-based net-effect measurement of these immediate and intermediate outcomes with less precise, lean monitoring of indicators to verify the contributory role of these outcomes that are outside the span of direct influence, such as household income and poverty alleviation.

the intergovernmental International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) designated a Consultative Board to ... more the intergovernmental International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) designated a Consultative Board to work on the World Cocoa Economy, and to foster sustainability of the sector considering the three pillars of sustainability: economic, environmental and social sustainability. In 2008, this became formalized in a public-private partnership (PPP), named the Working Group on Round Table for Sustainable Cocoa (RTSC). The Working Group will consist of governments of producing and consuming countries, the European Commission, selected NGOs and trade and industry associations, the ICCO Spokespersons for Producers and Consumers and the Chairman of the ICCO Consultative Board on the World Cocoa Economy. The present report is geared to the policy advisors involved in these discussions, and wants to highlight some dynamic and historic elements related with the governance of the cocoa value chain.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

Although a growing field of policy intervention, the effectiveness of public-private value chain ... more Although a growing field of policy intervention, the effectiveness of public-private value chain support is regularly questioned in the policy realm. Partly resulting from stronger pressures on aid money to show its worth, convincing evidence is asked for the effect on poverty alleviation. However, impact evaluations of interventions are challenging: outcome indicators are often multi-dimensional, impact is generated in dynamic and open systems and the external validity of conclusions are often limited, due to contextual particularities. Therefore, there is a strong case for theory-based evaluation where logic models indicate how the intervention is expected to influence the incentives for people's behaviour. The key assumptions inherent in these casual models can be tested through observation and measurement of specific outcome indicators, using mixed methods in triangulation. The mix of methods will have to anticipate the major threats to validity to the type of evaluative conclusion that the evaluation is expected to generate .Following the work of Shadish, Cook and Campbell (2002), validity threats relate to: 1) statistical conclusion validity; 2) internal validity; 3) construct validity; and, 4) external validity. The authors propose the combined use of data-set observations and causal-process observations in a comparative case-study design, based on critical realist concept of contextmechanism-outcome configurations. The use of a realist method to describe and analyze intervention pilots, facilitates the exchange of experiences between development agencies with evidence-based research. Its defined generalisation domain may prevent uncritical embracement of good practices. Certain value chain upgrading strategies may be viable and effective in a range of situations but are not the panacea, the standard solution, for creating market access; they all involve specific institutional arrangements that 'fire' specific mechanisms and incentives that depend on the institutional environment and social capital of stakeholders involved.

Evaluation, 2013

Partnerships between companies and non-governmental organizations that aim to incorporate smallho... more Partnerships between companies and non-governmental organizations that aim to incorporate smallholder farmers into value chains are increasingly being promoted as a way of pursuing development goals. This article investigates two case studies of such partnerships and the outcomes they achieved in order to refine the rationale underlying such interventions. In two case studies in Uganda and Rwanda, we documented the sequences of events within such partnership interventions, their context, and the intermediate outcomes, identified as the new rules and practices that generate institutional change. By portraying both the configuration of events within a partnership intervention and the contextual factors, these case studies reveal how the interventions produced outcomes that were situated in changing contexts, such as changes in market demand, government policy or business strategy. The research approach made it possible to disentangle partnership interventions and contextual processes,...

What is the key message? Central to the book of Tom McFeat is an understanding how small groups p... more What is the key message? Central to the book of Tom McFeat is an understanding how small groups perform specific task, and whether the task performed induces a specific organizational form or culture. The key message is that tasks connect small groups to their environment. Accordingly, the study of doing, making or performing is necessary for understanding the order within an organisation and for explaining the culture of a group. McFeat approaches culture in terms of transferring information to new members of the group, either in time or space. McFeat examines two central questions, namely how group cultures are organized and how they evolve. Interestingly, the book relates organisational order and social action to the performance of technical tasks in a specific environment. 2.2 What is the theoretical grounding? This book looks into smallĉgroup association and culture. This is the analytical focus of social anthropologists, who work most effectively with 'primary groups' (p.175). McFeat refers to the famous anthropologist Mead who concludes that social anthropologists are equipped to study groups of such a magnitude where they can: "specify the relationships of all the members of the group to one another within the context of the total group" (Mead, 1965: 175). Hence, analyses of government bureaucracies or stratification of ethnicity or class do not fall within the understanding of social anthropologists. J.M. Roberts, who represents anthropologists who did various ethnographic studies of task groups such as basket makers or hunting groups in the 1930s, inspired McFeat to study smallĉgroups as bounded entities that can be experimentally created. The equal status of 'natural' and 'experimental' groups is a central argument in the book, which also suggests that some kind of institutional engineering may result in smallĉgroup cultures that can be as functional to the performance of a certain task as smallĉgroup cultures that originated in an evolutionary process embedded in a local context. "Once set in motion, experimental groupĉcultures must be left to grow and change by themselves without artificial manipulations on the part of the observers or 'experimenters'. [..] Once set in motion, a groupĉculture more or less takes on its own character and is difficult to change" (p.xiĉxii). Group formation is an important issue in anthropology. It leads to questions on what binds people together, how are groups ordered, how is information transmitted, how are groups linked to other groups, and how are social networks constituted and sustained. McFeat examines culture insofar as it is suspended in group (rather than in persons or in some other medium). He stays within the framework of anthropology but moves outside the frame of reference of kinship (p.2). The task of the book is to understand how interpersonal activity can be transformed into culture or how culture transforms itself into interpersonal activities (p.7). The book looks within smallĉgroups as a basic unit of behaviour and organization. Taking such a functional perspective, groups comprise more than a network of relations (p.149). The anthropological perspective developed by McFeat has a strong interest in the material side of culture and looks into the use of technology and into performance of tasks.

Acta Horticulturae, 2006

Maneuvering as an individual actor seems to be common practice in the competitive Thai fruit sect... more Maneuvering as an individual actor seems to be common practice in the competitive Thai fruit sector. This paper reflects on a participatory methodology used in a multi-stakeholder process initiated to create linkages and to explore a possible strategic fit between different actors in the supply chain of Thai fruit. Fundamental to the approach was the idea that understanding diversity of interests, building new relationships, enhancing collaboration and combining individual strategies may strengthen the integral performance of a supply chain. From our practitioners' perspective, robust and responsive networks of chain actors might be better equipped to create value and to deal with market demands. Underlying this practitioners' perspective lies the question whether individual behavior enables small and medium enterprises to cope with the requirements of competition and regulation or whether a focus on relations with other businesses and public agencies may enhance their performance. An insight generated during this process was that a viable supply chain or sector strategy requires a feasible balance between marketdriven strategies, i.e. standards of food safety and quality, and production-driven strategies, i.e. management of seasonal oversupply in specific production regions and technology development. Consequently, resilient collaboration between partners needs capacity to construct a strategic fit, while acknowledging individual behaviors.

Stewart Postharvest Review, 2008

ABSTRACT Purpose of review: This review aims to introduce the institutional and policy oriented l... more ABSTRACT Purpose of review: This review aims to introduce the institutional and policy oriented literature on technological innovation into the context of postharvest engineering. The focus is how rigorous quality and food safety standards in cross-border agricultural and horticultural trade influence technological change up stream in the agri-food chain. The review presents a selection of literature that considers technological innovation as a process, with a specific focus on the enabling and constraining institutional conditions found in developing countries. The literature is grouped into three thematically defined frames: (i) interaction in systems of innovation; (ii) upgrading in value chains; and (iii) converging to pro-poor business models. Findings: This review shows that the efficacy of innovation policies and strategies are not only related to technical choices supporting agricultural producers and small and medium sized food processing firms, but also to the institutional linkages and architectures in which innovation and technological change are embedded. Another important finding of the review is that although technologyoriented literature acknowledges the relevance of institutional and policy dimensions as well as the systemic nature of technological change, there is little connectivity between this literature and the scholarly work on technological innovation found in the social sciences and development studies. Implications: The capacity to design and implement studies that combine an in-depth understanding of specific technological performance problems with novel institutional linkages is needed for enabling innovative capabilities in developing countries. Directions for future research: Integrative research programs may be necessary to unravel the interdependencies between technological change and the social-economic and institutional environment in order to inform policy frameworks and business strategies to enhance innovation.

IDS Bulletin, 2014

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010

Evaluation, 2013

Acta Horticulturae, 2006

Stewart Postharvest Review, 2008