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Building Inclusive Agricultural Value Chains

Call for Papers for an Online Seminar Series in October 2020

Deadline extended

We invite researchers to submit an extended abstract of a paper to be
presented at an online event on building inclusive agricultural value chains,
to be held in October 2020. We welcome contributions from all relevant
disciplines, including but not limited to innovation science, science and
technology studies, development studies, economics and philosophy. We
understand agricultural value chains to include chains leading to food
products, clothing, energy, and biobased applications.

Dates and workshop modus Due to the limitations imposed by the COVID-19
crisis, we have decided to opt for an online event rather than the 2-day
workshop that we initially planned to organize at Delft University of
Technology. The online event will take the shape of a seminar series in
October 2020 with four sessions at the following dates and times:

Tuesday 6 October 2020, 18.0022.00 CET (12.0016.00 New York time,
9.0013.00 LA time)
Tuesday 13 October 2020, 18.0022.00 CET (12.0016.00 New York time,
9.0013.00 LA time)
Tuesday 20 October 2020, 18.0022.00 CET (12.0016.00 New York time,
9.0013.00 LA time)
Tuesday 27 October 2020, 18.00-22.00 CET (13.00-17.00 New York time,
10.00-14.00 LA time)

The first three sessions will consist of a keynote speaker and subsequent
academic paper presentations, the last session is a public event.

About the topic Inclusive agricultural value chains hold the promise of
improving the livelihoods of farmers, while offering commercial actors a
reliable supply of high-quality raw materials and products. Such value chains
can provide farmers with economic opportunities and resources, while offering
commercial actors a chance to shape relevant agricultural practices. Including
local stakeholders in the set-up or design of agricultural value chains
taking into account their needs, values, wishes and knowledge can be a way
to deal with uncertainties about sustainability (Pretty, 1995, Rist et al,
2007). Approaches to creating sustainable agriculture that focus mainly on
technological aspects while neglecting local stakeholders are often
unsuccessful from a business perspective (Hounkonnou et al, 2012). Such a lack
of inclusion has already negatively affected many sustainable agricultural
value chains (Ibid., De Hoop et al, 2016, Balkema & Pols, 2015). Inclusion of
local stakeholders can be a promising basis for robustness and commercial
success (Devaux et al, 2016, Harper et al, 2015). Local producers often have
valuable knowledge about land management, their natural environment, and the
associated biomass. This knowledge is indispensable for the sustainable supply
of agricultural produce and reducing economic inequalities (IPCC, 2019). When
taking not just local producers but
also a wider range of local actors into account, inclusion may enhance
distributive justice. Including local agricultural producers can thus be
expected to have both epistemic and moral benefits (Wals, 2007).

However, there are many uncertainties about how to organise inclusive
agricultural value chains (Devaux et al, 2017; Kamali et al, 2018), especially
because such value chains usually have a global set-up, while the production
of agricultural commodities takes place in widely diverging contexts
(Meckenstock et al, 2016). This makes it difficult to derive (scientific)
generalizations of how to enhance sustainability and economic fairness in this
type of value chains. Nevertheless, experiences and practices in contexts are
important for understanding how agricultural value chains can be structured in
such a way that inclusiveness of local stakeholders and business
sustainability can beneficially go hand in hand.

Questions to be addressed Specific topics regarding building inclusive
agricultural value chains that we would like to see addressed include:

1) Conceptualizing inclusion and distributive justice in agricultural value
chains;
2) Identifying levels of inclusion amongst local stakeholders and strategies
for increasing inclusion;
3) Governance mechanisms to support inclusive agricultural value chains;
4) The role of certification in building inclusive value chains;
5) Responsibilities of various actors along the value chain to achieve
inclusion;
6) The impact of specific technological innovations on the set-up of inclusive
value chains;
7) The role of local institutions and culture in the set-up of inclusive value
chains;
8) Ways to take the capabilities of various actors into account;
9) The relationship between inclusion and the security of supply throughout
the chain;
10) The contribution of inclusion to business strategies and commercial
interests;
11) How can inclusive value chains contribute to community resilience in the
face of global, catastrophic events?

Other research questions and topics that fit the general theme are welcome as
well.

Keynote speakers
Keynote speakers will be announced soon.

Abstract submission

People interested in contributing to the workshop are requested to submit an
extended abstract of 1000 words at
https://www.aanmelder.nl/inclusive-agricultural-value-chains/. The deadline
for abstract submission is 1 July 2020. You will be notified before 22 July
whether you are invited to participate in the workshop. Special issue On basis
of a selection of the contributions to the workshop, we intend to compose a
special issue for a suitable journal in the field (such as e.g. Agriculture
and Human Values or Environmental and Agricultural Ethics). If your paper is
selected to be part of this special issue, you will be invited before the end
of October 2020 to submit your full paper (deadline still to be determined).

Cost of participation
The fee for academics to participate in this online seminar series will be
40.

Event organizers Event organizers are:
Lotte Asveld (assistant professor at Delft University of Technology) Eefje
de Gelder (postdoctoral researcher at Delft University of Technology) Zoe
Robaey (assistant professor at Wageningen University) Emiel Wubben
(associate professor at Wageningen University) The online seminar series is
the closing event of the research project project Inclusive Biobased
Innovation: Securing sustainability and supply through farmers involvement
(IBIS), which was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific
Research (NWO).
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