D2.3 Biodiversity in the value chain review
Creators: name: Viira, Ants-Hannes
name: Aleksandrova, Olha
name: Aro, Kerst
name: Ariva, Jelena
name: Lamprinakis, Lampros
name: Mattas, Mattas, Konstadinos
name: Tsakiridou, Efthimia
name: Solovyeva, Irina
name: Baourakis, George
name: Yercan, Murat
name: Knez, Marija
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022

description: This study reviews the current information on the crop value chains that support biodiversity and  analyses their critical endogenous and exogeneous factors. The underlying assumption of this study  is that increasing the diversity of crops by cultivating neglected and underutilized crop varieties and  landraces has a positive effect on biodiversity. The study uses a systematic literature review  approach. A total of 1193 individual publications were found as a result of the queries done on 18  January 2022. After applying several exclusion criteria, the final criteria for inclusion were that  publications examined a particular crop or group of crops in particular country or a region, and were  not itself reviews. 54 papers met these criteria. After the thematic coding and internal reviews, the  following value chain segments were analysed: inputs, farmers, processing industry, distribution,  and consumers. Additionally, institutions and policy emerged as important topic. Of the reviewed papers, 37% studied cereals and legumes, 28% studied fruits and vegetables, 12% focused on coffee, cocoa or tea, 9% studied potato varieties, and 9% studied crops grown by trees either in forests or plantations.  

Seeds are the most critical input for farmers. Constraints for accessing quality seeds, and organization of supply of seeds are the two most important challenges to tackle. Often, underutilized crops and landraces are cultivated in marginal or fallow lands by small-scale farmers. This makes it difficult to achieve economies of scale via mechanization and other techniques. In case of some crops, postharvest handling and storage facilities are important to secure quality of the products, and thereby lack of resources and/or access to capital might be a significant barrier. Many authors have established that underutilized or neglected crops, and landrace varieties are cultivated in sustainable management systems, which benefit from the feedbacks within the systems. However, sometimes low input systems are not coping well with diseases and pests.

One of the main benefits for farmers and small-scale processors from participating in short supply chains lies in earning higher premiums by cutting out one or more segments of the value chain. The marketing activities of small-scale farmers need to be coordinated to achieve sufficient product volumes for processing industry or retailers. Coordination of market activities with smallholders can be challenging because sometimes they operate according to different logic than value chains. Therefore, middlemen, collector agents or wholesalers have an important role in securing demand for the products through their networking and business skills.  

In general, cultivating niche crops may provide an opportunity for earning price premium. More diversified crop production inevitably results with more varied quality of the products and less products with identical quality parameters. However, for the processing industry the raw material needs to correspond to certain quality, technical and sanitary standards. At the same time, smallholders might have difficulties in fully understanding the importance of quality requirements. For retailers, one of the mainmotivations to work with such products is distinguishing themselves from competition. Retailers may buy products from distributors or directly from farmers but often the low and unstable supply and quality are problems.  

The demand for products based on landraces, underutilized and neglected crops might be low for several reasons – these products may be used as accessory foods rather than staples, consumers may have lost habit of consumption of these products and might consider them old-fashioned or not tasty, they might be unaware of the nutritional and/or medicinal qualities of the products. Also, consumers may be unaware of and therefore not value the agroecology of certain products, the products may beavailable only seasonally. It is important to create trust among consumers towards the products, especially when it comes to launching new products on the market. The quality of a products needs to be defined and also guaranteed. However, due to increasing number and complexity of certificates and labels and competition between these, it is becoming questionable to what extent these inform consumers, affect their willingness to purchase and pay, and to what extent these schemes benefit producers. Through social innovation, it is also possible to establish informal systems to assure product quality for consumers. Therefore, local short supply chains could be de facto transparent also without formal quality assurance schemes, while global chains need to develop and use formalized certification and labelling schemes.

The role of institutions and policy in this context is to create an enabling environment for development of value chains that support biodiversity. No single actor or value chain segment can preserve certain variety or develop value chain for its products. Therefore, value chain governance is of importance. Successful development of value chains needs long-term commitment, and lack of continuity of public policies due to government changes poses a risk thereof. It has been suggested that value chains itself have a limited effect on biodiversity conservation, thereby in addition to market-oriented solutions, complementary conservation strategies should be planned and executed.