The social construction of “shared growth”: Zambia Sugar and the uneven terrain of social benefit

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a growing trend in agricultural investment and large-scale farmland acquisition in the Global South and a rapid expansion of scholarship and public debate over the nature, consequences, and desirability of these trends. The polarization of this debate into "win/lose"

Institutional Factors That Affect Inclusive Businesses: The Case of Banana Cooperatives in the Magdalena Region (Colombia)

“…The Inclusive business concept has been mainly developed by different international and national organisations (ENDEVA 2010; AVINA 2007; SNV and WBCSD 2010; SNV and WBCSD 2008) and has been used in several studies related to the topic (Arora, Kazmi and Bahar 2012; Chamberlain and Anseeuw 2019; German and Parker 2019; Halme, Lindeman, and Linna 2012; London, Anupindi, and Sheth 2010).…”

Sine Qua Nons of sustainable biofuels: Distilling implications of under-performance for national biofuel programs

“…While factory work tends to be more permanent, higher paying and more highly valued (Feintrenie et al, 2010;UNEP, 2008), most of the jobs created are in the plantation sector where job quality is usually low -often dismally low. Employees often struggle to leverage livelihood benefits from employment due to the unskilled, casual and migrant character of plantation labor; poor employment conditions; competition with other livelihood streams; and health consequences of employment (Colchester, 2011;German and Parker, 2015;Hunsberger et al, this issue;Li 2011;Macedo, 2005;World Bank, 2010).…”

“…For those examples that can be held up as models of smallholder inclusion for the biofuel industry, the role of the state (as regulator and financier, and to a lesser extent capacity builder) seems paramount both in achieving and maintaining distributional equity. Even for those cases held up as models of what biofuels can deliver, success is patchy and its effects are highly uneven (German and Parker, 2015;McCarthy, 2010).…”

“…Narrowly framed aims, on the other hand, open the door for positive evaluations of program effectiveness while obscuring other ways in which programs may undermine those very same aims. This may be illustrated by the variable ways in which employment and smallholder outcomes may be evaluated, and the divergent findings that emerge when adopting different metrics (Deininger et al, 2011;German and Parker 2015;Hunsberger et al, this issue;Li, 2011;McCarthy, 2010;Schoneveld et al, 2011;World Bank, 2010). If we measure success as the simple fact of jobs being created or smallholders being engaged as outgrowers, then biofuels may be viewed as a success.…”

Gender, politics and sugarcane commercialisation in Tanzania

“…The level of risk to smallholders can be highly dependent on the particular business model used (Cotula 2011) as well as the strength of customary claims to land, which may favour smallholders in the balance of power between contractual actors (Smalley and Corbera 2012;White et al 2012). Within the sugarcane sector as a whole, outcomes have been found to vary within categories of outgrowers, company employees and land-holder or loser, thereby challenging the model's agenda of 'shared growth' and inclusivity (German and Parker 2019). Within the literature on gender and agriculture, it is well established that gender inequalities may be exacerbated by the failure to pay attention to intrahousehold gender dynamics in contractual arrangements (Agarwal 1994(Agarwal , 1997Behrman, Meinzen-Dick, and Quixumbing 2012;FAO 2011;Schneider and Gugerty 2010), or by exploitative employment conditions in estate agriculture (Mbilinyi 1988;Smalley 2013, 52) and a global trend towards feminisation and casualisation of the workforce (Standing 1989).…”