Restructuring international food chains: Building sustainable and all-inclusive food chains at the primary stages

Although it is often acknowledged that effective inclusion of small-scale primary producers in international chains is crucial for alleviating poverty in developing countries, few insights exist about how to build sustainable and all-inclusive food chains especially those based on scarce natural resources. In order to address challenges that marketing and development policy and institutions as well as small-scale primary producers in the agro-ecological sector face in promoting sustainable practices, this paper focuses on the use of contracts. The paper investigates whether small-scale primary producers would engage in contracts that oblige them to implement sustainable and quality-improving practices and if so under what conditions. Results show that primary producers (fishermen in this study) are open to sustainability-quality enhancing contracts provided that such contracts also enhance their welfare and economic benefits. Implications for building sustainable and all-inclusive international marketing channels are discussed.