Assembling Export Markets E-Book

Stefan Ouma

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Serie: RGS-IBG Book Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 610

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Assembling Export Markets explores the new ‘frontier regions’ of the global fresh produce market that has emerged in Ghana over the past decade.

• Represents a major and empirically rich contribution to the emerging field of the social studies of economization and marketization
• Offers one of the first ethnographic accounts on the making of global commodity chains ‘from below’
• Denaturalizes global markets by unpacking their local engagement, materially entangled construction, need for maintenance, and fragile character
• Offers a trans-disciplinary engagement with the construction and extension of market relations in two frontier regions of global capitalism
• Critically examines the opportunities and risks for firms and farms in Ghana entering global fresh produce markets

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title page

Series Editors’ Preface

Preface

Technical Remarks

List of Figures

List of Tables

Abbreviations

Map

Chapter One: Introduction: Struggling with “World Market Integration”

Rethinking Global Connections

Grounding Commodity Chains: Geographies of Marketization

Matters of Concern

How This Book Unfolds

Chapter Two: Querying Marketization

Studying Markets as Practical Accomplishments

Exchanging Goods the “Right” Way

Knowing

and

Doing Markets

Formatting Market Encounters

The Order(ing) of Markets

Conclusion

Chapter Three: Remaking “the Economy”: Taking Ghanaian Horticulture to Global Markets

Models of Organizing “the Economy”: From Macro to Micro

A Tale of Two Frontiers

Sites of Attention

Conclusion

Chapter Four: Critical Ethnographies of Marketization

Researching Markets in the Making

Outside/Inside “the Market”

“Reconstructing” Market Practices

After “the Field”:

Veni, Vidi, Vici

?

Conclusion

Chapter Five: The Birth of Global Agrifood Market Connections

Nothing Was Packaged for (High-value) Export

The Terms of “World Market” Enrollment

Good(s) Connect(ions)

Conclusion

Chapter Six: Enacting Global Connections: The Making of World Market Agencies

Qualculating the Mango Tree

Responsibilizing/Autonomizing Farmers

Value/Power

Conclusion

Chapter Seven: Markets, Materiality, and (Anti-)Political Encounters

The Hidden Conditions of Global Markets

Powerful Valorimeters

Pricing, Returns, and Visible hands

Power Relations as Relations of Accounting

Conclusion

Chapter Eight: Market Crises: When Things Fall Apart, or Won’t Come Together

A Model in Crisis

Reassembling the Market Social?

Recalcitrant “Nature” and the Crisis of the Developmental Market

Regrouping

Conclusion

Chapter Nine: Conclusion

Beyond Inclusion

“Market Modernity,” Alternatives, Critique

Beyond Agrifood: Profanizing Marketization

References

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

Chapter 05

Table 5.1 From “peasant” to “outgrower”

Chapter 06

Table 6.1 Major control points of GLOBALG.A.P.

List of Illustrations

Map

Figure 0.1 Map of Ghana’s regions and agroecological zones.

Chapter 03

Figure 3.1 Trends in and composition of horticulture exports from selected African countries to EU-15 countries.

Figure 3.2 “Ready for take-off”: brochure published by TIPCEE 2008.

Chapter 05

Figure 5.1 A truck being loaded with pineapples on a farm.

Figure 5.2 Outgrowers in their farms, assisted by OFL staff.

Chapter 06

Figure 6.1 A mango farm destroyed by bush fires in 2010.

Figure 6.2 Pineapple farmers attending an IPM meeting.

Chapter 07

Figure 7.1 A refractometer.

Chapter 08

Figure 8.1 EU imports of pineapple from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Costa Rica, 1995–2009.

Figure 8.2 A field planted with MD2.

Figure 8.3 Pineapple market participation in southern Ghana, 1980–2009.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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RGS-IBG Book Series

For further information about the series and a full list of published and forthcoming titles, please visit www.rgsbookseries.com

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Assembling Export Markets: The Making and Unmaking of Global Food Connections in West AfricaStefan Ouma

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Assembling Export Markets

The Making and Unmaking of Global Food Connections in West Africa

Stefan Ouma

This edition first published 2015© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Registered OfficeJohn Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UKThe Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Stefan Ouma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for.

C: 9781118632611

P: 9781118632581

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Front cover image © Stefan Ouma

Series Editors’ Preface

The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The Series places strong emphasis on theoretically-informed and empirically-strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories.

For details on how to submit a proposal please visit:www.rgsbookseries.com

Neil Coe

National University of Singapore

Tim Allott

University of Manchester, UK

RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Preface

Research projects not only write histories, they also have one. Before I began the project leading to this book, I had just had finished a project on the impact of the private food safety standard GLOBALG.A.P. on the governance of horticultural value chains in Kenya. In the course of that project, I became increasingly dissatisfied with the conceptual and methodological tools global commodity/value analysis provided to unpack the “world market integration” of firms and farms in the Global South. What about the actual practice of global commodity/value chains? What about the inner workings of firms and farms? What about the larger dynamics of agrifood capitalism and its underlying patterns of commodification, valorization, accumulation, and dispossession? And most importantly, could we just substitute “chains” for “markets” at a time when the practice of development was all about “markets”? Being concerned by these questions, I wanted to get a more grounded understanding of global market connections: how are they actually forged in situ? How do managers, workers, or farmers enact these connections and reiterate them within everyday organizational practices? What happens “backstage”? Surprisingly, there was hardly any literature on such questions in the wider field of agrifood studies. Although I could have continued to pursue these questions in regard to the case of the Kenyan fresh produce industry, I decided against joining the herd of researchers that have besieged managers, workers, farmers, and policy-makers from the 1990s onward in a country whose horticulture subsector is often called an economic success story.

Instead, Ghana’s emerging fresh fruits industry attracted my attention in late 2007. Even though the country’s pineapple subsector was experiencing serious structural challenges around that time, Ghana was framed as a candidate for a “horticultural take-off” in donor circles and policy papers alike. Such a narrative tied well into the political representations of Ghana as an “emerging economy.” But what lurked beneath those phrases? What exactly happened on the ground? Fortunately, a group of managers, farmers, and market-makers in Ghana enabled me to tackle these questions. Without their trust, help, engagement, knowledge, and agency, this book would not exist. I therefore thank them. Although I am indebted to these people in the very first place, I am also guilty of what many researchers do: I have co-produced knowledge with participants of my research, I have flown back to a university in the Global North, I have reworked and repackaged it, and finally I have published it, surely with only a limited benefit to the people I actually worked with.

Despite the critical take on markets I develop in this book, it must be read as an acknowledgment of the daily struggles the participants of my research were involved in – managers, farmers, workers, and other market-makers. Personally, I believe that representatives of the companies I worked with had the very best intentions and had a keen interest in contributing to development and poverty reduction in the areas they were operating. Thus, this book is not a critique of the people or the organizations that so readily facilitated my research, but rather a critique of those perspectives on markets that take them for granted and render them natural, normal, stable, egalitarian, nonpolitical, and purely social spaces. Nevertheless, geographical associations made related to the case study companies may have been altered to ensure anonymity.

Obviously, I could not have completed this project without the help of many other people inside and outside of Ghana. I would thus first and foremost like to thank Peter Lindner and Marc Boeckler of the Department of Human Geography at Frankfurt University for their intellectual, moral, and financial support throughout this project, which they also helped to transform into a German Research Council (DFG)-funded project (“The Global Agricultural Market and its Fuzzy Margins: Forms and Consequences of the Integration of Smallholder Farmers into Transnational Commodity Chains – The Example of Ghana”). Although saddled with many other obligations, both repeatedly traveled with me to Ghana and showed a keen interest in “the field.” Peter gave me every freedom I needed throughout a cordial and collegial relationship over the past six years. I would also like to thank Stefano Ponte of Copenhagen Business School for co-examining the dissertation that led to this book. Furthermore, I am hugely indebted to Kojo S. Amanor at the University of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah Institute of African Studies in Legon, whose sharp comments made me rethink several parts of the book and gave it a more critical edge here and there. Iddrisu Azindow of the same institution kindly shared his in-depth knowledge on northern Ghana with me and helped with validating several Dagbani terms used in the book. Of course, both may still disagree with some parts of this book. I am also hugely indebted to Apiatus, Iddrisu, Daniel, and Alex for their invaluable field assistance as well as Elizabeth Arthur for her sound interview transcriptions and Twi-English translations. My Frankfurt colleagues Katharina Abdo, Veit Bachmann, Iris Dzudzek, Julia Verne, and Alexander Vorbrugg provided further critical comments that also helped improve the book manuscript. Special kudos go to Hanna Strass, David Adjei, Martin, Nanja Nagorny, Phillipe, and Maik. I would also like to thank Elke Alban, Ömer Alpaslan, Ian Copestake, Olivier Graefe, Niels Fold, Detlef Müller-Mahn, Martin Müller, Matthew Hannah, Lindsay Whitfield, and Dorothy Hauzar, who in one way or another contributed to this project. Finally, I would like to thank Neil Coe, Jacqueline Scott, and Allison Kostka of Wiley, and three anonymous reviewers for having confidence in the project, as well as Eva for having confidence in me.

Frankfurt, November 2013

The following chapters contain ideas that have been published previously. Permission to publish this material is gratefully acknowleged.

Chapter 3: Ouma, S., Boeckler, M., & Lindner, P. (2013). Extending the Margins of Marketization: Frontier Regions and the Making of Agro-export Markets in northern Ghana.

Geoforum

48, 225–235.

Chapter 8: Ouma, S. (2012). Creating and Maintaining Global Connections: Agro-business and the Precarious Making of Fresh-cut Markets.

Journal of Development Studies

48 (3), 322–334.

Technical Remarks

Anonymization: In this book, all names of individuals, organizations, and many geographical locations have been anonymized or altered to ensure anomymity and/or confidentiality. In some cases, sources such as reports that could identify my case studies are withheld, and the wording of the information derived from these sources has been slightly changed to ensure anonymity.

Monetary values, currencies, measurements: All monetary values used with regard to the case studies are approximations. The exact figures are witheld to ensure confidentiality. In some instances, the currency is withheld to ensure confidentiality and is simply designated as “xx” or “xy.” All Ghana cedi values used in this book correspond to New Ghana cedis (GHS). As of December 31, 2008, 1 GHS = USD 0.77 = € 0.54. As of December 31, 2010, 1 GHS = USD 0.66 = € 0.50. 1 GHS = 100 pesewas. 1 acre = 0.405 hectares.

Language: Twi and Dagbani terms for certain English expressions are provided in brackets and vice versa.

List of Figures

Figure 0.1

Map of Ghana’s regions and agroecological zones.

Figure 3.1

Trends in and composition of horticulture exports from selected African into EU-15 countries.

Figure 3.2

“Ready for take-off”: brochure published by TIPCEE 2008.

Figure 5.1

A truck being loaded with pineapples on a farm.

Figure 5.2

Outgrowers in their farms, assisted by OFL staff.

Figure 6.1

A mango farm destroyed by bush fires in 2010.

Figure 6.2

Pineapple farmers attending an IPM meeting.

Figure 7.1

A refractometer.158

Figure 8.1

EU imports of pineapple from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Costa Rica, 1995–2009.

Figure 8.2

A field planted with MD2.

Figure 8.3

Pineapple market participation in southern Ghana, 1980–2009.

List of Tables

Table 5.1

From “peasant” to “outgrower”

Table 6.1

Major control points of GLOBALG.A.P.

Abbreviations

ADP

Agricultural Diversification Programme

AEF

African Enterprise Foundation

AgSSIP

Agricultural Sector Services Investment Programme

ASIP

Agricultural Sector Investment Programme

CSR

Corporate Social Responsibility

€

Euro

EC

économie des conventions

EDAIF

Export Development Agriculture Investment Fund

EMQAP

Export Marketing and Quality Assurance Programme

EPZ

Export Processing Zone

EU

European Union

FA

Field Assistant

FDI

Foreign Direct Investments

g

grams

GCC

Global Commodity Chains

GEPC

Ghana Export Promotion Council

GFZB

Ghana Free Zone Board

GHS

Ghana cedis

GTZ/GIZ

Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit/Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit

GVC

Global Value Chains

HEII

Horticulture Export Industries Initiative

IMF

International Monetary Fund

IPM

Integrated Pest Management

JIT

Just-in-time

kg

kilograms

MCA

Millennium Challenge Account

MOAP

Market-oriented Agriculture Programme

MOFA

Ministry of Food and Agriculture

mt

Metric tons

NDC

National Democratic Congress

NES

New Economic Sociology

NGO

Non-governmental Organization

NIE

New Institutional Economics

NPP

New Patriotic Party

NTE

Non-traditional Exports

OFL

Organic Fruit Limited

QMS

Quality Management System

R&D

Research and Development

SCM

Supply Chain Management

SSEM

Social Studies of Economization and Marketization

SPEG

Sea Freight Pineapple Exporters’ Association of Ghana

SSST

Social Studies of Science and Technology

STA

Sociotechnical

agencement

TF

Ton:go Fruits

TIPCEE

Trade and Investment Programme for a Competitive Export Economy

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

USP

Unique Selling Point

USAID

United States Agency for International Development

USD

US dollars

Figure 0.1 Map of Ghana’s regions and agroecological zones.

Chapter OneIntroduction: Struggling with “World Market Integration”

It has become a familiar scene in Densu Valley, Aborobe district, southern Ghana: Trucks piled with fresh pineapples struggle through the rough rural terrain, making their way to the nearby processing facility of a multinational agribusiness company. Upon arrival, the fruits are sliced and packed, and flown “fresh from farm” and “just-in-time” to retailers in Europe, where an affluent and quality-conscious urban clientele would buy the little 200 g packages of pineapple chunks, making the farmers distant participants in the convenience food revolution.