Assembling the chain of high value crops in western Honduras

Abstract

The international donor community has introduced value chain development as a fundamental approach to achieve rural development cost-effectively. This “market systems development” approach has been widely introduced in the Honduran agricultural sector in an effort to integrate small farmers into high-value agricultural chains, such as horticulture. In this paper, I have elaborated a critical theoretical framework to analyze the development rhetoric of using horticultural value chains as a solution for rural poverty reduction in low-income countries. I used a sociological approach based on “assemblage thinking.” The paper reveals that a value chain assemblage is relatively complex with many relations, with different interests and affects and that a top-down approach to upgrading smallholders and modernizing value chains leaves little maneuvering room for smallholders’ decision making and autonomy. The hegemony of project or expert knowledge takes precedence over all other alternatives. There is a need for reflexivity to address this dominant development strategy and devise an alternative development model where the smallholder form of production could play an important role in producing enough local food in a culturally and ecologically appropriate way.