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A Guide to Value Chains

This guide provides resources for understanding value chains in the agricultural sector as they relate to IFPRI goals and research areas.

What are Value Chains?

Value chains are a set of processes and flows that bring a product from production to the final consumer. Value chain actors include anyone (private, public, and service providers) who has conducted value-adding activities to the process. Examples include Fisheries Value Chains and Agricultural Value Chains. Analyzing individual steps and actors within the chain of production is important to understanding a product's final value. Frequently supply chain analysis has been used to optimize performance, drive down production costs, and impose unfavorable terms that disadvantage supplier profitability. By reassessing value chains within systems of production and working to foster strategic partnerships it is possible to make the system more equitable to all parties, achieve greater economic stability, and decrease the environmental impact.

Africa’s Agricultural Value Chain. Copyright A.T. Kearney, 2016. All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

CGIAR

   CGIAR Research Initiative: Rethinking Food Markets and Value Chains for Inclusion and Sustainability

This Initiative aims to provide evidence on what types of bundled innovations, incentive structures, and policies are most effective for creating more equitable sharing of income and employment opportunities in growing food markets, while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint.

This objective will be accomplished through:

  • Making globally integrated value chains inclusive, efficient, and environmentally sustainable.
  • Innovation for inclusive and sustainable growth of domestic food value chains.
  • Innovations and policy design for development of cross-value chain services to leverage new employment and income opportunities.
  • Knowledge tools for policy coherence and market reform for inclusive and sustainable food market transformation.

To learn more about this initiative visit CGIAR.org

IFPRI is a CGIAR Research Center