ABSTRACT
The restructuring of the tea, coffee and cocoa sectors has provided a rich source of material for research into the connections between global value chains and international development and poverty reduction. An extensive body of literature has documented the inter-relations between these chains being transformed from state-centric to global-private in their organisational logic, and the coincident crash of global prices (Baffes 2005; Daviron and Ponte 2005; Fold 2001; Gibbon and Ponte 2005; Gilbert 1996; Neilson 2007; Ponte 2002; Talbot 2002). These research contributions, firstly, have documented how the nascent regime of global private-regulation has been authored largely by an influential cadre of lead firms – supermarket chains and multinational food companies (coffee roasters, tea blenders and confectioners) – whose commonality relates to the imperative to possess, extract value and protect valuable intangible assets stored in retail brands; and secondly, have identified the processes of value chain re-regulation as lead firms seek to attach various product and process attributes to the raw and semi-processed products they purchase, thereby incorporating upstream producers within modes of ordering based around traceability requirements and harmonised grades and standards (Busch and Bain 2004; Ponte and Gibbon 2005; Reardon et al. 2001).
