Publication: Understanding Developing Country Strategic Responses to the Enhancement of Food Safety Standards
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Published
2008
ISSN
03785920
Date
2012-03-30
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This paper explores the competing concepts of 'standards as barriers' and 'standards as catalysts' in the context of food safety standards in international trade in agricultural and food products. Through a review of existing evidence of the impact of food safety standards on developing country exports of agricultural and food products and the results of a series of country- and product-specific case studies, it is suggested that food safety standards can act as both a barrier to trade and the basis of competitive positioning for developing countries in international markets. This suggests that broad conclusions about the trade effects of food safety standards on developing countries are problematic, rather the level and ways in which agricultural and food exports are impacted can be product, country, standard and even firm-specific.
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Publication Standards and Agro-Food Exports from Developing Countries: Rebalancing the Debate(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-06)The proliferation and increased stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards is a source of concern among many developing countries. These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued success of their exports of high-value agro-food products (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either because these countries lack the technical and administrative capacities needed for compliance or because these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or protectionist manner. The authors draw on available literature and work in progress to examine the underlying evidence related to the changing standards environment and its impact on existing and potential developing country exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than the mainstream "standards-as-barriers" perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus impact differently on the competitive position of individual countries and distinct market participants. Some countries and industries are even using high quality and safety standards to successfully (re-)position themselves in competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural health measures within the context of wider capacity constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers. The key question for developing countries is how to exploit their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial and regulatory context.Publication Not Yet Up to Standard(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009-07)The relative prosperity enjoyed by Uganda during the 1960s, based largely on the traditional exports of coffee, tea, cotton, and tobacco, was eroded by a devastating civil war over the period 1971 to 1985. The paper is based upon interviews with selected respondents, including government authorities, exporting companies, donors, and practitioner organizations, carried out in 2007 and 2008. The paper is divided into four sections. Section one provides a brief historical perspective on the emergence of the Ugandan fruit and vegetable export industry and examines the role played by different government and donor initiatives in the initial shaping of the sector, between the late 1980s and late 1990s. Section two highlights the strategic commercial approaches adopted by Ugandan exporting companies and farmers during the 2000s in response to past performance and in the face of evolving regulatory and market requirements, especially in the European Union. Section three examines the rationale for, means of support of, and apparent efficacy of a range of recent programs seeking to improve or sustain the competitiveness of Uganda's fruit and vegetable exports via improved compliance with regulatory or private standards. Lessons are drawn from this experience. Section four provides a brief set of general conclusions.Publication Making the Grade : Smallholder Farmers, Emerging Standards, and Development Assistance Programs in Africa - A Research Program Synthesis(World Bank, 2011-06-01)Market access has been identified as one of the foremost factors influencing the performance of small-scale producers in developing countries, and in particular least-developed countries. Smallholder access to markets for higher-value or differentiated agricultural and food products (hereafter HVAF) is recognized as a vital opportunity to enhance and diversify the livelihoods of lower-income farm households and reduce rural poverty more generally (World Bank 2007a). Smallholder participation in HVAF markets is typically constrained by inadequate farm-level resources, farm-to-market logistical bottlenecks, and more general transaction costs in matching and aggregating dispersed supplies to meet buyer and consumer demand. These traditional constraints have been amplified and, in some cases, surpassed by a new set of challenges associated with compliance with product and process standards, set and enforced by governments as well as private supply-chain leaders. In the face of emerging challenges and opportunities associated with standards and serving HVAF markets, many development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies, and private companies have implemented measures to level the playing field, strengthen specific technical or institutional capacities, or otherwise act to facilitate smallholder compliance with standards and continued or increased participation in HVAF supply chains. Such investment, cost-sharing, capacity-building, or capacity-bridging activities have expanded considerably in recent years, especially in SSA. These initiatives have taken varied forms and involved various entry points. Many initiatives have been bottom-up, focusing on smallholder (group) capacities for production, collective action, standards compliance, and so forth; others have been top-down, seeking to better link farmers to remunerative markets through the efforts and enhanced capacities of lead firms; and others have opted for intermediary models, with donors and NGOs assuming critical supply-chain functions. Still other interventions have focused outside of specific value chains, seeking to strengthen the overall enabling environment and support services for HVAF more generally. Relatively little of this expanding field of development assistance has been formally evaluated to consider its cost-effectiveness and impacts. Nevertheless, there are evident signs of learning and adjustment within the development community regarding the strengths, limitations, and pitfalls of various approaches and, relatively recently, some efforts to begin to share these lessons and to better coordinate development assistance in this field.Publication Linking African Smallholders to High-Value Markets : Practitioner Perspectives on Benefits, Constraints, and Interventions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2008-03)This paper provides the results of an international survey of practitioners with experience in facilitating the participation of African smallholder farmers in supply chains for higher-value and/or differentiated agricultural products. It explores their perceptions about the constraints inhibiting and the impacts associated with this supply chain participation. It also examines their perceptions about the factors affecting the success of project and policy interventions in this area, about how this success is and should be measured, and about the appropriate roles for national governments, the private sector, and development assistance entities in facilitating smallholder gains in this area. The results confirm a growing 'consensus' about institutional roles, yet suggest some ambiguity regarding the impacts of smallholder participation in higher-value supply chains and the appropriateness of the indicators most commonly used to gauge such impacts. The results also suggest a need to strengthen knowledge about both the 'old' and 'new' sets of constraints (and solutions) related to remunerative smallholder inclusion, in the form of the rising role of standards alongside more long-standing concerns about infrastructure and logistical links to markets.Publication Kenyan Exports of Nile Perch: The Impact of Food Safety Standards on an Export-Oriented Supply Chain(World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2004-06)Over the past decade, exports of fish and fishery products from developing countries have increased rapidly. However, one of the major challenges facing developing countries in seeking to maintain and expand their share of global markets is stricter food safety requirements in industrialized countries. Kenyan exports of Nile perch to the European Union provide a notable example of efforts to comply with such requirements, overlaid with the necessity to overcome restrictions on trade relating to immediate food safety concerns. Although food safety requirements were evolving in their major markets, most notably the European Union, most Kenyan exporters had made little attempts to upgrade their hygiene standards. Likewise, the legislative framework of food safety controls and facilities at landing sites remained largely unchanged. Both exporters and the Kenyan government were forced to take action when a series of restrictions were applied to exports by the European Union over the period 1997 to 2000. Processors responded by upgrading their hygiene controls, although a number of facilities closed, reflecting significant costs of compliance within the context of excess capacity in the sector. Remaining facilities upgraded their hygiene controls and made efforts to diversify their export base away from the European. Legislation and control mechanisms were also enhanced. Hygiene facilities at landing beaches were improved, but remain the major area of weakness. The Kenyan case illustrates the significant impact that stricter food safety requirements can have on export-oriented supply chains. It also demonstrates how such requirements can exacerbate existing pressures for restructuring and reform, while prevailing supply and capacity issues constrain the manner in which the supply chain is able to respond. In Kenya most of the concerted effort to comply with these requirements was stimulated by the sudden loss of market access in very much a crisis management mode of operation, illustrating the importance of responding to emerging food safety requirements in a proactive and effective manner.
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