The adoption of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) and value chain upgrading in the Brazilian coffee production context

Labor in agrifood value chains: a scientometric review from Scopus

“…Nevertheless, the multiplication of standards and their specific characteristics have different impacts on the issues aforementioned (Henson and Humphrey, 2010). In the Brazilian coffee value chain, for example, environmental requirements are better addressed by certifications than labor ones, which are limited to minimum legal requirements (Piao et al, 2019). In Mexican and African horticultural value chains, private standards have developed a contradictory pattern characterized by: (1) the increasing product quality, increasing employment security for skilled permanent male workers, while (2) increasing employment insecurity without social benefits for women and temporary migrant workers, or outsourcing tasks to labor contractors (Barrientos and Kritzinger, 2004;Barrientos et al, 2003;Grammont and Flores, 2010;Riisgaard, 2009;Riisgaard and Hammer, 2011;Tallontire et al, 2005).…”

“…Since agricultural sector is organized into diverse activities, such as vegetal production, livestock, fishery, among others, several studies have been published focusing on specific type of agrifood value chains worldwide, such as coffee in Brazil (Piao et al, 2019), dairy in Tanzania (Lie et al, 2012), fisheries in Malawi (Manyungwa et al, 2019), rice in Bangladesh (Minten et al, 2013), and horticulture in Mexico and African countries (Barrientos et al, 2003;Grammont and Flores, 2010;Kritzinger et al, 2004). These studies were performed in different agricultural models, considering farm size and labor, such as large-scale farms based on hired labor (Barrientos et al, 2003;Gibbon and Riisgaard, 2014), peasant and small-scale agriculture based on family labor (Manyungwa et al, 2019;Pegler, 2015).…”

Circular Economy Business Models for the Tanzanian Coffee Sector: A Teaching Case Study

“…The production of mushrooms starting with coffee by-product is an activity capable of significantly increasing the social and environmental sustainability of coffee-producing organizations, as will be explicated in Section 5.6. Coffee importers are increasingly sensitive to the sustainability of the entire supply chain, as demonstrated by different surveys [113,114]. Enhancing the internal sustainability of the organization therefore constitutes an effective strategy to deliver greater value to the entire supply chain as well as respond to the needs of Western markets which recognize socially and environmentally sustainable products.…”

Green Growth and Agriculture in Brazil

“…These improvements can be classified in product and process, called economic upgrading and environmental and social upgrading [29,30]. Previous studies adopted the concept of upgrading to analyse the effects of adopting voluntary sustainable certification on producers [31][32][33]. The main dimensions of economic upgrading are price, income, quality and productivity [32,34].…”

“…Economic upgrading referring to a more efficient organisation of production could improve the work environment in terms of increasing regulated work contracts [34]. Moreover, better management of properties of coffee production involving voluntary sustainability standards could lead to environmental upgrading by a better control on the use of pesticides [31]. Therefore, the complementarities among different types of upgrading could be important to strength green growth policies.…”