How Chinese demand for fresh fruit and vegetables is creating new landscapes of rural development and vulnerability in Southeast Asia: Insights from the Myanmar melon frontier
How Chinese demand for fresh fruit and vegetables is creating new landscapes of rural development and vulnerability in Southeast Asia: Insights from the Myanmar melon frontier
复制标题
中国对新鲜水果和蔬菜的需求如何创造东南亚农村发展和脆弱性的新景观：来自缅甸甜瓜前沿的见解
DOI：
10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.03.008
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
3.5
通讯作者：
Phyo Aye Sandar
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kubo Koji;Pritchard Bill;Phyo Aye Sandar
东南亚大陆已成为中国进口新鲜水果的重要来源。但是，这些活动是如何促进生产地点的区域发展模式的？本文利用缅甸以中国为中心的甜瓜生产的见解，对这个问题产生新的见解。我们认为，这种贸易的扩张创造了一种结构性的战略耦合形式，其中利益流向了相对较少的参与者。虽然这些结果与世界其他地方的新鲜水果和蔬菜出口链有一些相似之处，但这种情况的特殊之处在于，它们是通过一种价值链治理形式创造的，与通常与出口新鲜水果和蔬菜生产相关的零售商主导的安排截然不同。在中缅甜瓜贸易中，经纪人而不是零售商发挥主导公司的作用。这些安排造成了独特和极不均衡的风险和回报分配，阻碍了价值链的升级，造成了严重的环境掠夺。2020年COVID-19疫情爆发，导致当地农民在边境贸易突然减少时承担巨额成本和债务，使这些流程相关的脆弱性得到了极大的缓解。
Mainland Southeast Asia has become an increasingly important source for Chinese imports of fresh fruit. But how have these activities contributed to patterns of regional development in sites of production? This paper uses insights from China-centric melon production in Myanmar to generate new insights into this question. We argue that the expansion of this trade has created astructuralform of strategic coupling in which benefits have flowed to a relatively small number of participants. Whereas these outcomes have some similarities to fresh fruit and vegetable export chains elsewhere in the world, what makes this case special is their creation through a form of value chain governance quite unlike the retailer-led arrangements typically associated with export fresh fruit and vegetable production. In the Myanmar-China melons trade, brokers, not retailers, exercise lead firm functions. These arrangements have generated distinctive and highly uneven distributions of risk and reward that have inhibited value chain upgrading and created substantial environmental despoliation. The vulnerabilities associated with these processes were brought into sharp relief with the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, which led to local farmers bearing huge costs and debts when the border trade was abruptly curtailed.