Fresh Perspectives Issue 21. Development practice, agrifood standards, and smallholder certification: The elusive quest for GlobalGAP?
Abstract
There has been a widespread fear among different international development organisations that the proliferation of GlobalGAP (formally EurepGAP) would lead to the exclusion of smallholder farmers from high value markets in horticulture producing countries across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Accordingly, supporting smallholder certification to GlobalGAP and related capacity development at both farm and institutional levels has been put on the development agenda by GTZ, the Department for International Development (DFID), the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID), the Comité de Liaison Europe-Afrique- Caraïbes-Pacifique and the Pesticides Initiative Program (COLEACP/PIP), and recently the World Bank in several developing countries, including Ghana and Kenya as prominent examples.
This paper draws on results from a research project on the impact of GlobalGAP on value chains in the horticulture sub-sector in Kenya (and to a lesser extent on preliminary results from a new project on Ghana) with critical reference to the certification of smallholder farmers.
Citation
International Institute for Environment and Development, London, UK, 2 pp.
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