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Abstract
In parallel with changes in official
standards, supermarket chains in Europe have
developed prescriptive, production-oriented standards,
e.g. the European Union Retailers Produce Working
Group for Good Agricultural Practices (GlobalGAP),
and are asking their suppliers for produce to be certified
according to food-safety and quality standards. There
are concerns that the proliferation and enhanced
stringency of standards that are imposed by high-income
countries can negatively affect the
competitiveness of producers in developing countries
and impede actors from entering or even remaining in
high-value food markets. Yet, in some cases, others
argue that such standards can play a positive role,
providing the catalyst and incentives for the
modernization of export supply and regulatory systems
and the adoption of safer and more sustainable
production practices.
This article provides an empirical analysis of EU
private food-safety standards impact on pesticide use
and farm-level productivity among smallholder export
vegetable producers in Kenya. We apply an extended
three-stage damage control production framework that
accounts for multiple endogeneity problems to farm-level
data collected from a random cross-section sample
of 439 small-scale vegetable producers.
Estimation results show that export producers
complying with private standards significantly use less
toxic pesticides; however there is no significant
difference on the total quantity of pesticides used.
Contrary to findings elsewhere, the econometric
evidences here show that export vegetable farmers in
Kenya use pesticide below the economic optimum. The
third stage structural revenue model results
demonstrate a positive and significant impact of
standards adoption on revenue of vegetable production.
While food safety and quality standards can be a barrier
for resource poor smallholders to maintain their
position in the lucrative export markets, they can also
induce positive changes in production systems of small-scale
farmers who adopt it as shown by the results
presented. Generally this article partly supports the
notion that adoption of emerging food-safety standards
can serve as a catalyst in transforming the production
systems of developing countries towards safer and more
sustainable production.