Aiding trade: case studies in agricultural value chain development in Cambodia

Abstract

This thesis presents an inquiry into agricultural development. More specifically it addresses the question: how do development agencies construct and reconstruct new and existing agricultural commodity chains to assist the rural poor to trade their way out of poverty? Growing unevenness in the development process has led to calls for development to become more pro-poor. An increasingly popular tool employed in such efforts is agricultural commodity chain development, more recently and perhaps more salubriously called value chain development. The key idea here is to assist poor rural agriculturalists (the majority of the world’s poor) to upgrade their livelihoods through appropriately configured commodity chains. Although conceptions vary about what sort of commodity chain is best engaged or how to engage it, the primary tenet of this approach is that given appropriate assistance the poor may trade their way out of poverty. As such this thesis is as much about examining the aid agencies enrolled to instigate commodity chain development, as it is an investigation into agricultural commodity chains themselves. The four case studies of this thesis: rice seed, organic rice, fresh vegetables and chilli sauce provide examples of the different ways that aid processes may interact with trade processes with varying outcomes. At the core of my thesis lies a philosophical discussion about the role of gifts and commodities relations in cross-cultural development interactions. Gifts and commodities are often set out as two distinct and incommensurate forms of exchange. I argue that they are not. In efforts to aid trade it is evident that various material and knowledge flows necessarily combine a range of gift and commodity relations that are difficult to separate. Even those development projects with the most explicit market focus often find it hard to maintain the false dichotomy between aid and the private sector, gift and commodity relations. This is because neither gifts nor commodities are absolute states of being; rather they are just one manifestation of value in what Appadurai (1986) terms ‘social life of things’. In this view, a commodity is only just one possible phase in the social life of a thing, as it travels within different regimes of exchange demanded by society. Things may enter and exit the sphere of commodities and likewise gifts may do the same. What may appear as a commodity in one instance can appear as a gift in another. This is especially the case in developing countries such as Cambodia where this thesis is set and where a larger proportion of the society may be considered ‘non-market’ and agriculture is specifically predisposed towards patron-client relations. However, current conceptions of how best to assist private sector development advocate strict separation between aid and the private sector. That is to say that private development ‘best practice’ approaches maintain a false dichotomy between gifts and commodities, which in reality is difficult to maintain. This often leads to failure and confusion of development projects, if not decidedly anti-poor development. Thus the primary argument of this thesis is that we need to look at the entirety of social relations involved in commodity chain construction, not just market transactions or lack thereof. This means that we need to understand gift relations, not just commodity relations in agricultural commodity chain interventions if such efforts are ever to be pro-poor.