Several decades of agrarian reform in Honduras resulted in the creation of an important number of agricultural production cooperatives. While agrarian co-operation meets increasing criticism, this book offers a comprehensive appraisal of the internal "rationality" of maintaining the cooperative framework, especially when market and institutional failures persist. Making use of modern transaction costs, economics and contract choice theory, it is demonstrated that operational efficiency and prospects for sustainable land management can still be guaranteed. The author offers a detailed analysis of rules and mechanisms used by cooperative members to enforce transparent contractual arrangements, and indicates several pathways for the consolidation of cooperative enterprises. Major attention is given to access to information, labour monitoring procedures, and payment systems as devices for mutual insurance. The book provides an excellent example of application of the New Institutional Economics approach on rural development issues in Latin America.

Op 3 oktober 1949 zette de Nederlandse regering de eerste schreden op het pad van ontwikkelingssamenwerking met een bijdrage van 1,5 miljoen gulden aan het VN-programma voor internationale technische hulp. Nu, 65 jaar na de start van ontwikkelingssamenwerking, is het tijd voor bezinning: wat is er bereikt door de Nederlandse ontwikkelingssamenwerking? En vooral: wat zijn de nieuwe uitdagingen voor de strijd tegen mondiale armoede,0uitsluiting en ongelijkheid?0Dit boek is samengesteld door Stefan Verwer, Lau Schulpen en Ruerd Ruben en bevat persoonlijke bijdragen van belangrijke spelers in het Nederlandse ontwikkelingsdebat: beleidsmakers, politici, wetenschappers, journalisten en directeuren van ontwikkelingsorganisaties. Zij geven geen kant-en-klare oplossingen, maar analyseren ontwikkelingssamenwerking vanuit Nederlands en mondiaal perspectief.0Met het boek willen de samenstellers richting geven aan het debat over de toekomst van internationale samenwerking door de discussie aan te zwengelen en alternatieve inzichten te presenteren hoe Nederland in de toekomst kan bijdragen aan het oplossen van het mondiale armoedevraagstuk.

The focus in international debates on zero hunger (SDG2) and appropriate strategies for food and nutrition security (FNS) has gradually shifted from production-oriented approaches that mainly look at food availability and the contribution of smallholder farmers for guaranteeing sufficient food supply, to more demand-oriented strategies that focus on critical constraints for equitable access to nutrient-rich food and affordable diets for resource-poor consumers. This change in orientation is accompanied by (1) a shift in analytical paradigms that give priority to food system organisation and governance and interactions and strategies for overcoming trade-offs, and (2) a search for innovative approaches to improve the impact of policy incentives for reaching key societal goals, such as poverty reduction, climate change mitigation and social inclusiveness. This paper provides an overview of current insights regarding the effectiveness of different types of incentives for influencing the behaviour of key food system stakeholders: producers, traders, consumers and policy makers. We assess two major causes for frequently occurring policy failures: (1) lack of understanding of the underlying drivers and motives of stakeholder behaviour, and (2) limited insights in stakeholder interactions. Better understanding of food systems performance may enhance prospects for supporting food systems transformations. Disentangling our insights into the complex nature of producers and consumer decision-making processes and their non-linear responses to economic incentives, will enable us to outline possible pathways for future policy research around strategies for improving food system outcomes.

This paper assesses the available information and identifies insights with respect to the role of the private sector in food system transformation processes and their contributions to food and nutrition security in developing countries. We focus on different stages of the food supply chain to identify whether and how private sector agents are contributing to specific food system outcomes. Particular attention is given to business activities that rely on multiple agents, multiple levels or multiple stakeholders for enhancing their impact. Based on a detailed review of the literature, we outline major impact pathways for private sector’s contribution to healthier, safer and affordable diets. We finally classified the academic literature according to different types of involvement of private sector activities for supporting or contributing to food system transformation processes.