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  • Publication | 2024

Developing sustainable food value chains - Practical guidance for systems-based analysis and design: Practical guidance for systems-based analysis and design

Global Food and Nutrition Security

This brief outlines a rigorous and standardized approach for value chain analysis and design, taking a systems perspective to analyse and influence the behaviour and performance of value chain actors influenced by a complex environment. The brief also covers the design of upgrading strategies and associated development plans, based on the identification of root causes of value chain bottlenecks and using a participatory and multistakeholder approach. The brief is primarily based on FAO’s Sustainable Food Value Chain (SFVC) framework which promotes a systems-based development of agrifood value chains that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, as well as resilient to shocks and stressors. The end-product of the application of the methodology is a VC report with four components. The first two components, a functional analysis and a sustainability assessment, make up the VC analysis. The last two components, an upgrading strategy and a development plan, represent the VC design.