Bloom 2015 - Standards For Development PDF

Rural Sociology 80(2), 2015, pp.
198–227
DOI: 10.1111/ruso.12060
Copyright © 2014, by the Rural Sociological Society
Standards for Development: Food Safety and Sustainability

in Wal-Mart’s Honduran Produce Supply Chains*
J. Dara Bloom
Department of Youth, Family, and Community Sciences
North Carolina State University
Abstract Public-private partnerships between supermarket retailers and

development agencies help small-scale producers reach growing domestic
markets in developing countries. Drawing on qualitative data that focuses on
relationships between producers, development agencies, and Wal-Mart-
owned supermarkets in Honduras, the research presented here demonstrates
how, by introducing food safety standards to development agencies’ outreach
efforts, but without necessarily certifying producers or offering a price
premium, Wal-Mart uses these standards to simultaneously differentiate pro-
duction practices by promoting quality, while maintaining a standardized
market. As a result, the responsibility and costs for incentivizing growers to
change their practices is shifted to nongovernmental organizations. There-
fore, although an extensive body of literature describes standards and third-
party certification systems as the means for corporations to control
production practices, this research indicates that public-private partnerships
are a new vehicle by which corporations can influence agricultural produc-
tion practices. In addition, this article argues that the inclusion of food safety
standards in development projects leads to the conflation of food safety and
sustainability, without adequately interrogating which agroecological pro-
cesses food safety standards include and exclude. Therefore, retailers’ private
food safety standards dominate how sustainability is perceived and practiced
in the development context.
Introduction
As supermarket retailers became a dominant force in the agrifood
system in the past three decades, their efforts to secure the safety and
sustainability of their supply chains have garnered much academic inter-
est. This interest is primarily focused on retailers’ adoption of private
standards in response to social concerns about the conditions of food
* Many thanks to those who provided helpful comments and feedback on earlier ver-
sions of this article including Clare Hinrichs, Jason Konefal, Daniel Tobin, Kristal Jones,
and two anonymous reviewers. The research for this article was made possible and
enhanced by grant support received from various agencies and programs. These include a
National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (Award
#1103180), a predoctoral Fellowship from the USDA’s National Institute for Food and
Agriculture (Grant #2011-67011-30760), a Sustainability Seed Grant from the Penn State
Institutes for Energy and the Environment, and a Pennsylvania State University College of
Agricultural Sciences Graduate Research Award. The views presented here do not neces-
sarily represent those of these funders.
Standards for Development — Bloom 199
production and exchange along supply chains (Busch and Bain 2004;
Cashore 2002). Understood in the context of neoliberal governance,
private standards are a form of market-based regulation that can both
standardize production practices to facilitate free trade and differentiate
products for niche markets based on quality attributes (Busch 2011;
Hatanaka, Bain, and Busch 2006). In both cases, standards are consid-
ered part of “roll-out” neoliberalism, which attempts to reestablish regu-
lations in the face of the declining power of the nation-state and the
negative repercussions of relying solely on the self-regulating market to
distribute goods and benefits in the global economy (Guthman 2007;
McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Peck and Tickell 2002). As part of this
reregulation, private standards are often developed through public-
private partnerships, another neoliberal construct that relies on civil
society participation to ensure beneficial outcomes from market-based
mechanisms (Bäckstrand 2012; Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2011).
Finally, third-party certification systems interpret how standards are
implemented and ensure compliance through complex auditing proce-
dures (Hatanaka, Bain, and Busch 2005; Hatanaka and Busch 2008).
While much research has explored the role of public-private partner-
ships in the development phase of private standards (Constance and
Bonanno 2000; Giovannucci and Ponte 2005; Klooster 2010), less has
explored how supermarkets use public-private partnerships to implement
private standards, especially in the context of development projects
(Bitzer, Glasbergen, and Arts 2012; Wiegel 2013). Previous research has
shown that food safety standards are sometimes considered an “educa-
tional tool” by development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
and that third-party certification can be deemphasized in development
projects in favor of promoting industry-wide “good practices” (Hatanaka
et al. 2006; Tallontire et al. 2011). This article expands on these obser-
vations to explore the theoretical and practical implications of incorpo-
rating food safety standards into agricultural development projects, but
without necessarily relying on third-party certification.
A case study of these implications in Wal-Mart’s local produce sourc-
ing program in Honduras, which is implemented by development NGOs
that participate in public-private partnership projects with the retailer,
suggests that retailers use private food safety standards to promote
quality (as a form of differentiation in production practices), yet not as
a point of nonprice competition (markets continue to be standardized).
This differentiation of production practices, coupled with a standardized
market, detracts from producers’ ability to “strategically use” standards
to secure market access or niche market status (Hatanaka et al. 2006;
Tennent and Lockie 2012). In addition, while third-party certification is
200 Rural Sociology, Vol. 80, No. 2, June 2015
often described as the mechanism by which corporations outsource

responsibility and costs while maintaining control of systems and prac-
tices (Busch and Bain 2004; Hatanaka et al. 2005), this research finds
that private standards are influential outside the third-party certification
system. In this case, NGOs take on the role of disciplining producers by
enforcing standards in Wal-Mart’s local produce supply chains and intro-
ducing the precepts of food safety into their outreach programs, but
without necessarily certifying producers. In this way, food safety stan-
dards may permeate agricultural practices outside the purview of formal
certification systems, thus extending corporations’ ability to define
sustainability in the development context. While participants in this
study viewed food safety standards as promoting sustainability, the
simple conflation of food safety and sustainability obscures potential
conflict between these two concepts, as well as differences between the
formal standard and how it is implemented on the ground. Examining
the development implications of standards that aim to simultaneously
standardize production processes and define sustainability without using
the standard as a point of differentiation or providing a price premium
to support changes in production practices will be increasingly impor-
tant as food safety standards become more widespread in retailing supply
chains in Global South domestic markets.
This article first examines the role of private standards and public-
private partnerships in neoliberal governance and compares values-
based and food safety standards in terms of issues of sustainability and
development. It then highlights methods and findings, and concludes
with a discussion of the implications of normalizing food safety in devel-
opment projects, including issues of producer exclusion and the inter-
relationship between food safety and sustainability.
Neoliberal Governance: The Role of Standards and

Public-Private Partnerships
While exact definitions are contested, neoliberalism can be understood
as a reaction against a command-and-control, welfare state governance
model, and as a prioritization of what Polanyi (1944) calls the self-
regulating market (Edwards 2009; McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Peck
and Tickell 2002). Neoliberalism has “rolled back” the state’s responsi-
bilities, which in large part are shifted to private actors within the market
system (McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Peck and Tickell 2002). At the
same time, regulatory authority is transferred to supranational organi-
zations to facilitate free trade, and regulatory responsibility is devolved
(but usually without corresponding power or funding) to local levels of
governance (Guthman 2007; Klooster 2005; McCarthy and Prudham
2004; Peck and Tickell 2002). While the tenets of neoliberalism were put
into practice in the 1980s, their negative social and environmental con-
sequences led to the emergence of “soft neoliberalism,” or the “Third
Way,” in the 1990s and early 2000s (Edwards 2009; McCarthy and
Prudham 2004; Peck and Tickell 2002). Also referred to as “roll-out”
neoliberalism, the Third Way turns to civil society actors, often through
public-private partnerships and private standards, to create new forms of
regulation that mitigate the negative effects of the self-regulating market
(Edwards 2009; Fuchs, Kalfagianni, and Havinga 2011; Jepson 2005;
McCarthy and Prudham 2004).
Public-private partnerships became institutionalized as a develop-
ment approach in the early 2000s, and are one example of soft
neoliberalism’s reliance on “hybrid governance” arrangements that
bring together public, private, and civil society organizations
(Brinkerhoff and Brinkerhoff 2011).1 Public-private partnerships have
been studied extensively in the context of the rule-setting and imple-
mentation stages of values-based private standards such as those devel-
oped by the Forest Stewardship Council (Cashore 2002; Klooster 2005,
2010), the Marine Stewardship Council (Bush et al. 2013; Constance and
Bonanno 2000; Ponte and Gibbon 2005), and Fair Trade coffee (Bitzer
2012; Giovannucci and Ponte 2005; Raynolds, Murray, and Heller 2007).
In addition, there is a growing body of literature that examines public-
private partnerships whose purpose is to integrate smallholder farmers
into transnational and domestic supply chains to promote rural eco-
nomic development (Bitzer et al. 2012; Hellin, Lundy, and Meijer 2009;
Markelova et al. 2009; Narrod et al. 2009). To better understand how
private standards and public-private partnerships converge in Wal-Mart’s
local produce supply chains in Honduras, I describe first some of the
theoretical aspects of private standards, and then contrast values-based
standards with food safety standards in terms of their potential contri-
bution to sustainable rural development.
Private Standards: Standardization and Differentiation

The globalization of the agrifood system led to an increase in the
number of transnational supply chains that were often beyond the capac-
ity of nation-states to adequately regulate (Constance and Bonanno
2000; Hatanaka et al. 2005). As a result, both supranational regulatory
agencies and public-private partnerships have developed standards that
1
The role of NGOs as representatives of civil society in hybrid governance arrangements
oriented toward rural development, including a review of the role of NGOs in develop-
ment, is more fully discussed in a separate article based on this research (Bloom 2014a).
promote self-regulation in corporate transnational supply chains (Busch

and Bain 2004; Hatanaka et al. 2005). Standards are one of the predomi-
nant neoliberal market mechanisms, and their content and system of
enforcement often reflect corporations’ attempts to appease consumer
concerns about production processes, trade conditions, and product
attributes (Busch and Bain 2004; Cashore 2002; Hatanaka et al. 2005;
Klooster 2010). In the agrifood system, standards are regulated through
third-party certification systems, whose independent certifying bodies
audit producers and other supply chain participants. Reliance on third-
party certification systems allows companies to outsource responsibility
for regulating their supply chains, and the costs and liabilities (Hatanaka
et al. 2005). As a result, third-party certification “reorganizes, transforms
and disciplines people and things throughout the supply chain, with
differential social and economic implications for various participants”
(Hatanaka et al. 2005:355). As a governance mechanism, standards have
become the vehicle by which corporations control “what food is grown
where, how, and by whom” (Konefal and Mascarenhas 2005:82).
While third-party standards are often assumed to be objective,
science-based, “neutral market lubricants” that promote free trade,
researchers argue that they are social constructs that inherently reflect
the social position of the actors who created them and the certifying
bodies that implement them (Davey and Richards 2013; Hatanaka et al.
2005; Hatanaka and Busch 2008). In addition, Bain, Ransom, and
Higgins (2013:4) suggest that “private standards have emerged as tools
used strategically by both businesses and NGOs to achieve a range of
objectives. These objectives include access to new markets, coordination
of operations, quality and safety assurances to consumers, and the estab-
lishment of new brands, niche products and markets.” Producers in
developing countries are also able to “strategically use” standards, for
example by refuting perceptions of inferior quality and gaining access to
international and niche markets (Hatanaka et al. 2006; Tennent and
Lockie 2012).
The “strategic use” of standards revolves around promoting “quality,”
which has emerged as the basis for retailer competition rather than
solely price (Busch and Bain 2004; Busch 2000). Supermarkets’ use of
quality as the basis for competition coincides with a surge of public
interest in values-based standards. As described above, many values-
based standards are developed and implemented through public-private
partnerships in response to social movement and NGO pressure on
specific corporations and industries (Bitzer et al. 2012; Klooster 2010;
Raynolds 2012). Values-based standards often have the express goal of
introducing environmental and social criteria into production and trade
conditions. For example, Fair Trade emerged as a critique of unequal

trade relations and the failure of the development project to adequately
address poverty in the Global South (Raynolds 2000, 2009). A price
premium is used in Fair Trade as a way to redistribute value from
consumers in the Global North to producers in the Global South, thus
theoretically compensating for the inequalities that result from interna-
tional trade (Guthman 2007). In addition to the regular premium that
Fair Trade coffee growers receive, a certain “social premium” is often
held aside for community social programs and development efforts
(Raynolds 2009). As a result of their social and environmental orienta-
tion, values-based standards have been described as a way to re-embed
economic transactions in local contexts in such a way as to buffer against
the prioritization of the self-regulating market under neoliberalism
(Bacon 2005; Barham 2002). However, this perspective has been criti-
cized, suggesting that values-based standards are inherently neoliberal
constructs that perpetuate the use of the market, and therefore social
inequalities, and fail to adequately “push back” against the neoliberal
project (Guthman 2007; Klooster 2010).
In contrast to values-based standards, food safety standards have tra-
ditionally been developed and enforced through state regulations as a
way to protect consumers (Busch 2011). However, private food safety
standards were developed in the early 1990s in response to consumers’
perception of the failure of the nation-state to prevent food safety crises
(especially mad cow and hoof and mouth diseases), and in keeping with
the general neoliberal trends described above (Marsden, Lee, and
Thankappan 2010). One of these standards, EurepGAP, became particu-
larly influential and, in its renamed form of GlobalGAP, is now the
predominant set of food safety standards used worldwide, with over
100,000 certified growers (GlobalGAP n.d.).2 While EurepGAP aimed to
increase consumer confidence in the face of ever-increasing food safety
scares, this early form of Good Agricultural Practices standards was also
designed to define sustainable agriculture in a way that would be more
amenable to conventional growing practices than stricter organic stan-
dards (Campbell 2005; Marsden et al. 2010). While these standards are
2
EurepGAP (Euro-Retailer Produce Good Agricultural Practices) was initiated by a
group of European retailers, who invited government, food and environmental NGO, and
producer and consumer organization representatives to participate in the standards-
setting process (Campbell 2005; Marsden et al. 2010). Although the membership of this
coalition is still primarily European, the standards were renamed GlobalGAP in 2007 to
reflect the increasingly international scope of their influence, including the participation
of non-European corporations in the governance process (including the U.S.-based cor-
porations Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Wegmans, as well as several Asian, Eastern European,
and South African companies [GlobalGAP n.d.]).
voluntary and market-based, they increasingly predicate market access

for producers, making them “de facto mandatory” (Busch 2011; Busch
and Bain 2004:322; Hatanaka et al. 2005; Ponte 2008).
To compare the purpose and implementation of values-based and
private food safety standards, we can distinguish between the dual pro-
cesses of standardization and differentiation. In the “economy of
quality,” Busch (2007, 2011) has suggested that the purpose of some
standards is to standardize products and processes, thereby creating
mass markets and price-based competition, while the purpose of other
standards is to differentiate, thus establishing niche markets based on
quality as a form of nonprice competition. However, standardization and
differentiation can also be seen as occurring simultaneously, as different
actors use standards strategically to promote their interests (Hatanaka
et al. 2006). For example, the way that values-based labels differentiate
products and processes allows actors to compete based on quality rather
than price, and often includes a price premium for producers (Busch
2000, 2011; Busch and Bain 2004; Guthman 2004; Raynolds 2000).
However, the development of standards in these alternative agrifood
initiatives also standardizes production processes across regions, and
therefore these labels can be understood as a form of standardized
differentiation (Hatanaka et al. 2006).
In contrast, since food safety scandals have negative repercussions
that affect the reputation of the entire industry, individual companies
rarely use food safety certification as the basis of differentiation or
competition (Bain 2010a; Busch 2011; Ouma 2010). Private food safety
standards, such as Global GAP, reduce risk and liability for supermar-
kets, and in developing country markets, food safety standards help to
maintain a company’s reputation while increasing efficiencies in its dis-
tribution systems by ensuring quality and reducing prices (Henson 2011;
Henson and Reardon 2005; Wiegel 2013). Food safety standards are
therefore used to standardize production practices across an industry.
While food safety standards create a baseline of acceptable practices,
supermarkets and producers often add value to these standardized prod-
ucts to promote differentiated marketing, for example through addi-
tional processing or by promoting other quality attributes, thus leading
to differentiated standardization (Hatanaka et al. 2006).
The differences between values-based and food safety standards
become important when we consider the relationship between standards
and their implementation in a development context. Values-based stan-
dards such as Fair Trade promote rural development goals through the
distribution of a price premium, although their ability to redistribute
wealth in this way has been questioned and criticized for relying on the
good will of consumers in the Global North (Guthman 2007). Although

production practices are standardized through third-party certification,
Fair Trade standards rely on a differentiated market to support the price
premium that allows them to claim contributions to rural development.
On the other hand, GlobalGAP standards have the goal of standardizing
industry-wide production, but without offering a price premium or cre-
ating a differentiated market. At the same time, GlobalGAP includes
certain aspects of sustainability, and often requires changes in practices
for producers in the Global South (Berdegué et al. 2005; Marsden et al.
2010; Wiegel 2013). Since food safety standards lack a price premium to
support changes in production practices, it is important to consider how
these private food safety standards intersect with development projects
and sustainability.
GlobalGAP: Rural Development and Sustainability

While previous development strategies focused on high-value fruit and
vegetable production for export markets, recently domestic markets in
the Global South have caught the attention of retailers, development
agencies, and researchers (Balsevich et al. 2003; Berdegué et al. 2005;
Reardon and Berdegué 2002). This interest is in part because of the size
of these markets and the rapid expansion of supermarkets within devel-
oping countries, especially in Central America. According to one calcu-
lation, for example, the domestic market for fresh fruit and vegetables
within Latin America is double to triple that of the export market
(Reardon and Berdegué 2002). While some previous research has indi-
cated that supermarkets have not yet expressed interest in the coordi-
nation and costs of implementing food safety in domestic markets in the
Global South, most of the evidence from Central America suggests that
retailers in this region are working toward improving the quality and
consistency of their supply chains (Balsevich et al. 2003; Berdegué et al.
2005; Henson and Reardon 2005; Hernández, Reardon, and Berdegué
2007; Reardon and Berdegué 2002). In these countries, supermarket
retailers have formed public-private partnerships with development
agencies to provide the training and resources necessary to integrate
small-scale growers into the domestic retail market (Boselie, Henson,
and Weatherspoon 2003; Hellin et al. 2009; Michelson, Reardon, and
Perez 2012; Narrod et al. 2009). In many cases, development NGOs
provide training for complying with GlobalGAP, and see these standards
as a way to promote positive social and environmental benefits for small-
scale farmers (Hatanaka et al. 2006; Ouma 2010; Tallontire et al. 2011).
It is therefore important to examine the potential interrelationships
between food safety standards and sustainability in the development
context. The original GlobalGAP standards focused on integrated

systems, such as integrated pest management, to reduce chemical con-
tamination and define a version of sustainability that “recognize[s] the
importance major corporations and multinational supply bases place on
ensuring agriculture is undertaken in a responsible way that respects
food safety, the environment, workers’ welfare and the welfare of
animals” (EUREPGAP n.d.). While the early mission of GlobalGAP was
to create standards for both food safety and sustainability, the newer
version is “more focused on food safety and hygiene issues” (Marsden
et al. 2010:165). The current GlobalGAP standards focus on promoting
appropriate chemical use and reducing microbial contamination during
production, harvest, and postharvest handling. At the same time,
GlobalGAP regulates the conditions for animal welfare and wage labor,
although the specifications for the latter two are arguably much weaker
than those related to contamination or chemical usage, since they are
listed as “recommendations” rather than requirements (Bain 2010b;
Campbell 2005; Fuchs, Kalfagianni, and Arentsen 2009; Fuchs et al.
2011; Thompson and Lockie 2013). This is due in part to the fact that
many of the environmental and social aspects of the standards defer to
local legislation, whose stringency varies greatly in developing countries
(Thompson and Lockie 2013). In addition, the GlobalGAP standards
have been criticized for being created with little participation from
representatives in the Global South, with the result that they can be less
applicable to the particular environmental and social contexts of pro-
ducers in these regions compared to those in the Global North
(Campbell 2005). To address this criticism, GlobalGAP has increased
Global South representation on its board and has created benchmarked
standards adapted to local contexts (Henson 2011; Tallontire et al.
2011).3
In terms of the sustainability outcomes of GlobalGAP, studies have
demonstrated that export growers in transnational supermarket supply
chains reduced their pesticide use in response to the GlobalGAP stan-
dards (Berdegué et al. 2005; Galt 2008; Hernández et al. 2007). Yet
research on the effects of standards in transnational supply chains has
also indicated that such standards could exclude small-scale growers in
the Global South because of the costs and complexities of compliance
(Balsevich et al. 2003; Boselie et al. 2003; Reardon et al. 2003). Out-
comes of research in this field are mixed, and show that producers with
3
Since this research was conducted, GlobalGAP has introduced a standard specifically
designed to enhance retailers’ ability to source from smaller-scale, local producers in
emerging markets, called localg.a.p. See http://www.globalgap.org/uk_en/what-we-do/
localg.a.p./. For more about benchmarked GAP standards, see Tallontire et al. (2011).
certain financial or natural resources are better able than others to

participate in, and benefit from, supermarkets’ transnational supply
chains (Berdegué et al. 2005; Minten, Randrianarison, and Swinnen
2009).
The use of NGOs to facilitate smallholder compliance with private
food safety standards through public-private partnerships draws atten-
tion to questions of how this form of roll-out neoliberalism serves to
“discipline” people and places (Hatanaka et al. 2005; Peck and Tickell
2002). This review of the literature suggests that it is important to
examine how food safety standards combine the processes of standard-
ization and differentiation through their implementation by public-
private partnerships in the development context. Issues to consider
include how food safety standards are adapted to local contexts and what
effect they have on what is considered sustainable in development proj-
ects. The next section provides an overview of Wal-Mart’s history and
sustainability program in Honduras, then draws on qualitative field
research to explore these questions.
Background: Wal-Mart in Honduras and Research Methods

The entrance of foreign-owned supermarkets in Honduras began in the
1980s when these corporations expanded into Latin America as a result
of neoliberal trade liberalization and the saturation of their home
markets (Reardon and Berdegué 2002; Reardon et al. 2003). In 2005,
Wal-Mart became the largest supermarket retailer in Central America
when it acquired a majority share in the CARHCO group (Central
America Retail Holding Company; Gonzalez-Vega et al. 2006; Michelson
et al. 2012). As part of this transaction, Wal-Mart also acquired
Hortifruti, a regional distribution company with a long history of pro-
viding technical assistance to small-scale growers, mostly in its home
country of Costa Rica (Gonzalez-Vega et al. 2006).
Wal-Mart’s growing interest in domestic markets in the Global
South also coincides with the company’s sustainability strategy. In 2010
Wal-Mart committed to sourcing one billion dollars worth of produce
from one million small and midsize growers by 2015. Part of that shift
entailed training these growers in “sustainable farming practices” and
increasing their incomes by 10–15 percent (Walmart 2010). These goals
coincide with development strategies that see market integration as
the best way to move small-scale growers out of poverty (Hellin et al.
2009; Narrod et al. 2009). In Honduras and other Central American
countries, Wal-Mart has officially partnered with federally funded
U.S. aid agencies, such as the United States Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation4

(Gonzalez-Vega et al. 2006; Michelson et al. 2012; Narrod et al. 2009;
USAID 2011). These partnerships reflect broader trends in neoliberal
governance, in which public-private partnerships between businesses
and NGOs replace government services in areas such as agricultural
extension (Austin 2007; Bitzer 2012).
The subsequent analysis is based on qualitative data I collected
between July and November 2011 in Honduras. The USAID and Millen-
nium Challenge Corporation projects that partnered with Wal-Mart sub-
contracted technical assistance to a local agricultural university and
several NGOs. Using publicly available documents and contacts within the
development community, I first contacted representatives at these NGOs,
and they provided the names and information of participating producers.
Through snowball sampling, I created a purposive sample of 32 small to
midsize Honduran fruit and vegetable producers and 22 individuals
representing 10 different development organizations that provided tech-
nical assistance or facilitated market integration for small-scale growers.5
The sample of producers reflects regional variation, different scales of
production, and different methods of sale to supermarket supply chains
(see Table 1). The majority of producers (28) had five or fewer hectares,
and only three had received third-party Good Agricultural Practices
certification by a development agency or the government, while nearly
all had received some kind of technical assistance from development
agencies or projects, which most often addressed some elements of food
safety; two of the producers also had organic certification. About two-
thirds of the interviews were with individuals involved with projects in the
eastern and central regions and one-third in the western region. The
eastern and central regions’ smaller-scale farms mix production for
subsistence purposes and for local markets while larger, more industri-
alized farms in the region produce nearly exclusively for export
(Kammerbauer and Moncada 1998). This situation is common in
Honduras, where agricultural policies subsidizing export production
4
The Millennium Challenge Corporation was a U.S. foreign aid initiative developed
during the G. W. Bush administration, in part with the goal to improve livelihoods in
developing countries to suppress terrorism. It was controversial in its implementation,
since countries needed to meet a certain number of preestablished criteria that essentially
excluded many of the poorest countries from participating (Soederberg 2004).
5
While I conducted the majority of interviews individually, in one case, a producer
interview was conducted together with two agency representatives, thereby blurring the
producer’s role as president of a producers’ association and as a participating producer,
focusing the interview more on issues of facilitation and organization. I also interviewed
the two organic producers in this sample as a group in the presence of a facilitating
organization representative, which may have restricted their ability to speak freely about
their relationship with the organization.
Table 1. Selected Producer Characteristics.

Number of Producers
Region
Eastern 15
Central 8
Western 9
Hectares in cultivation
Less than one 8
Two to five 20
Six to ten 1
More than ten 3
Method of sale to Hortifruti
Direct 7
Through producers’ association 25
tend to concentrate horticultural production for export on large land-

holdings, while smaller producers work marginal land and grow tradi-
tional crops for domestic consumption (Stonich 1989). In comparison,
the western region has markedly higher levels of poverty and less
infrastructure (Falck 2004). While Honduran agricultural policies and
subsidized U.S. grain imports have caused rural restructuring and
outmigration in Honduras, small farms persist; in 2001 approximately 83
percent of all farms in Honduras were small scale, defined as five or
fewer hectares of land in production, and 36 percent of the working
population was employed in the agricultural sector (Sanders, Ramírez,
and Morazán 2006). The goal of many development projects in Hondu-
ras is to shift these small producers from staple crop production (such as
beans and corn) toward high-value fruit and vegetable production for
domestic supermarkets, yet the majority of growers in this study contin-
ued to grow basic crops for household consumption.
Facilitating organization representatives included nonprofit develop-
ment agency employees, technicians working on projects funded by
foreign governments, university employees, and one employee each
from Hortifruti and the Honduran Department of Agriculture. Four of
the participants who worked for a development agency or project had
previously worked for Hortifruti. On average, semistructured interviews
with producers and facilitating organization representatives lasted one
hour and were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. I conducted
analysis using NVivo 10, a qualitative data software program; the analysis
was guided by theoretical and emergent themes.6 I asked producers and
6
I conducted, transcribed, and analyzed interviews in Spanish (with the exception of
one interview in English, the native language of the research respondent). I relied on prior
experience as a certified translator in Spanish to English (certified by the Organización
facilitating organization representatives about issues related to the types

of agricultural practices promoted as part of development projects
working with supermarkets, how these were monitored, and how they
related to sustainability. In the next sections, I explore how quality was
defined and implemented through food safety standards, the incorpo-
ration of food safety standards in development projects without formal
certification, and the perceived interrelationship between food safety
standards and sustainability.
Findings
Defining Quality: Standardization and Differentiation
As is true in many parts of the Global South, and in keeping with the
theoretical concept of the shift in governance away from the predomi-
nance of the nation-state under neoliberalism, the Honduran govern-
ment does not have fully operational food safety certification in place for
its domestic market. Therefore, instead of collaborating with the gov-
ernment, Wal-Mart has worked with development agencies and projects
to define and implement food safety standards for its domestic supply
chains in Honduras. Hortifruti, Wal-Mart’s regional distribution
company, had originally attempted to perform certification services
internally, but, as one former employee reported, the task proved
beyond Hortifruti’s capacity to implement. Hortifruti’s buyers still pro-
vided some technical assistance, but there was variability in producers’
reports of the frequency and content of Hortifruti representatives’ visits.
Instead, over the past two years, a partnership between Hortifruti and a
regional development agency has provided food safety training and
certification services. Neither Wal-Mart nor the growers paid for these
services, which is important to note for two reasons. First, it illustrates
how the certification process, as a form of roll-out neoliberalism, allows
companies to shift costs and responsibilities onto third parties, in this
case onto development NGOs. Second, the costs of complying with food
safety certification are often cited as a major barrier to small-scale
growers’ participation in supermarkets’ supply chains (Campbell 2005;
Hatanaka et al. 2005; IAASTD, 2008b). The agency that performed cer-
tification services for Wal-Mart more than quadrupled the number of
small-scale farmers certified for the domestic market, but was still able to
certify only about 30 producers in 2009–2010 of the 284 (not including
individual members of producers’ associations and cooperatives or
Mexicana de Traductores), and the advice of a Honduran research assistant, to translate all
research instruments, analyze the text, and translate the quotations presented in subse-
quent sections.
seasonal and intermittent growers) that a Hortifruti employee listed as

suppliers. Low certification numbers despite subsidization of the costs
suggests that there were other barriers that made it difficult for produc-
ers to comply.
To overcome the challenges faced by small-scale growers, Hortifruti
worked with various development projects and agencies to create an
adapted version of the GlobalGAP standards tiered into three levels.
NGO respondents who had been involved in this process of adaptation
(either in their current capacity as an NGO employee or as part of their
previous employment with Hortifruti) explained that the first tier was
designed to address the most basic precepts of food safety, and the two
subsequent ones covered more advanced issues.7 One development
project employee said that the most basic level of certification encom-
passed about 60 percent of the GlobalGAP checklist, and focused less on
postharvest facilities and more on pest- and disease-control practices and
general cleanliness and hygiene to reduce contamination.
Adapting the GlobalGAP standards allowed Wal-Mart and this devel-
opment agency to determine the most vital aspects of food safety and
therefore what needed to be included in the first level. An employee
from the development agency that worked with Hortifruti on adapting
the standards emphasized the importance of considering how the pro-
ducer addressed the different control points. She reported helping pro-
ducers find low-cost solutions and use readily available materials to meet
the adapted standard; in the past she had seen farmer cooperatives fail
as a result of the heavy debt incurred by trying to meet the full
GlobalGAP standards, particularly in postharvest processing facilities.
Now, her agency’s focus was on ensuring that “the product that they’re
offering is free from physical, chemical or biological contamination.
Produced with a very rustic infrastructure, but meeting all the require-
ments. . . . What we’ve done is adapt the pillars of food safety and good
practices to the reality of the Honduran producer.” She described how,
instead of having a facility with running water for workers to wash their
hands in the fields, she would allow a small producer to substitute a
bucket of water with a spigot and some disinfectant soap.8 In another
7
Despite my repeated attempts to obtain a copy of Wal-Mart’s adapted GlobalGAP
standards to examine exactly what was included and excluded from the original standards,
neither the development agencies nor the Wal-Mart representative provided a copy. There-
fore, for the purposes of this analysis I rely on the perceptions of research respondents who
work with food safety in this field, which is a common approach for examining the
implications of standards and how they are implemented (Tallontire et al. 2011;
Thompson and Lockie 2013).
8
These types of adaptations echo descriptions from other studies on local GlobalGAP
standards; for example, Tallontire et al. (2011) describe how the benchmarked Kenya GAP
example, she reported having to negotiate with Wal-Mart: “Wal-Mart

said, ‘No animals.’ But we said, ‘Yes animals, but confined.’ So chickens
in the chicken coop. . . . Because they eat their eggs, they eat their meat,
we can’t eliminate them completely because it’s part of their culture.”
This staffer clearly thought she could negotiate with Wal-Mart, which
indicates that she saw her agency’s relationship with Wal-Mart as a part-
nership and not only instrumental in the provision of services. She also
highlights the challenges of applying food safety standards to integrated
farming systems that combine livestock and horticultural production.
Despite all these efforts at adaptation, a technician working with the
USAID project said of the most basic level of certification, “it didn’t have
a lot of costs, but . . . it was still a lot for people,” a finding similar to other
studies of Wal-Mart’s domestic supply chains in Central America (Wiegel
2013). Several NGO and USAID technicians reported that producers
had difficulty adopting new practices because those practices required of
producers a new mentality and culture. Moreover, producers were not
necessarily compensated with higher prices for these changes, although
the consistency and formality of their market relationships with
Hortifruti were often preferable to the volatility of traditional markets.9
To ensure that producers adopted new practices, most development
NGOs had technicians in the field to monitor and enforce quality prac-
tices. A technician working with one producers’ association said that his
aid agency provided inputs rather than credit to producers so that the
agency could ensure producers avoided prohibited substances. In this
way, NGOs assumed the responsibility for monitoring and enforcing
food safety standards, performing an important governance function in
Wal-Mart’s local produce supply chains.
standard allows small-scale producers to store pesticides in a metal box rather than a
separate building to recognize the limitations of their scale and resources while preserving
the spirit of the standards.
9
Hortifruti established a preseason price range with some producers’ associations to
protect producers from the fluctuating prices of the open market. Depending on the time
of the season, prices offered through Hortifruti may have been higher or lower than prices
offered by traditional markets. These findings are supported by two studies of Wal-Mart’s
local produce sourcing in Nicaragua, where it was found that wholesale markets offer
producers higher prices, but more variability, than Wal-Mart (Michelson et al. 2012; Wiegel
2013). Producers and organization representatives in this study reported variability in
Hortifruti’s commitment to these preseason prices. Nonetheless, many producers reported
that they preferred to sell to the more formalized retail market because their other
marketing option was to sell to coyotes, or intermediaries who visit farms and transport
produce, but who are known for being unreliable and for cheating small-scale producers.
The majority of producers in this study did not participate in export markets, although a
few exported to El Salvador or Nicaragua. Many saw selling to a domestic supermarket as
a positive step to one day being able to export to developed country markets.
Representatives from development agencies also believed that more

producers would undertake certification if certified produce were dif-
ferentiated with its own label and price premium. This perspective sug-
gests that, although food safety standards were designed to standardize
products for a mass market, in their implementation they may promote
quality in a way that adds value, fostering the perception that certified
produce deserves a price premium and niche market. However, an
NGO employee in charge of providing food safety training and certifi-
cation to producers noted that Wal-Mart continued to buy from farms
that weren’t certified, and therefore described the price premium as a
necessary incentive to motivate producers to continue implementing
food safety practices. Her observation that “we want the people who
were certified in 2009 to continue doing it, and sustainability is very
complicated when there aren’t incentives” illustrates her conflation of
food safety and sustainability, as well as her belief that food safety cer-
tification deserved a price premium. Respondents from several devel-
opment agencies cited a joint initiative in Guatemala between the
government and private exporter companies to create a food safety
label and certification system called PIPAA (Programa Integral de
Protección Agrícola y Ambiental, or Agricultural and Environmental
Protection Integrated Program; Balsevich et al. 2003; Berdegué et al.
2005). Several development agency employees wanted to see an actual
label and price premium similar to that used in Guatemala to support
differentiation in the Honduran market, while others (and the govern-
ment official) suggested that certified produce could have its own
section and signage in supermarkets.
While representatives from two development agencies that worked
together on the issue of food safety certification mentioned that they’d
received positive responses from Hortifruti about finding a way to com-
pensate growers for certification, the employee at Hortifruti rejected the
idea that food safety certification deserved a price premium:
Look. I think that on the global level people have misinter-

preted the purpose of Good Agricultural Practices and Good
Manufacturing Practices. Nobody’s going to pay you for them.
Nobody. The costs are a personal issue. Bad quality is what’s
expensive; good quality doesn’t cost anything. . . . So, the idea
that we should pay a premium for Good Agricultural Practices?
No. It’s not done. Nobody’s going to do it.
The issue of preferential treatment also highlighted this disconnect

of perspectives; a development agency representative thought that
Hortifruti would buy from certified growers before noncertified ones, a
notion that the Hortifruti employee contradicted, commenting that it

wouldn’t be fair to buy only from certified growers.
In this case, despite the fact that Wal-Mart continued to work with
development agencies to promote certification, it appeared that com-
plying with standards and getting certified provided little marketplace
benefit for producers, perhaps because Wal-Mart didn’t have a broad
enough supplier base to stop buying from growers who didn’t meet food
safety standards (Balsevich et al. 2003; Henson and Reardon 2005). The
company’s resistance to a food safety certification label, or having a
separate section in the supermarket for certified products, also has some
logic; assuring consumers that products from certain farms are safe
implies that the rest of the produce is somehow unsafe. While this
example is in keeping with research that indicates that supermarkets
don’t compete on the basis of food safety (Busch 2011), it highlights the
tension that emerges between how food safety standards are used to
promote quality, thereby requiring a substantial change in practices by
growers, and supermarkets’ desire to treat food safety certified produce
as an undifferentiated commodity. In this case, we can see differentia-
tion at the level of production, simultaneously as producers continue to
sell into a standardized market, which contradicts previous theories on
how the processes of standardization and differentiation work in tandem
(Hatanaka et al. 2006). Although GAP standards are intended to trans-
form the conditions of production for the entire industry, since they
don’t include a price premium to compensate growers it falls to NGOs to
enforce changes in agricultural practices and assure production of
higher quality products, even without formal certification.
Therefore, the next section explores how development NGO employ-
ees saw these practices fitting into their broader outreach and develop-
ment goals, and how they perceived the relationship between food safety
and sustainability.
Promoting Quality: Food Safety and Sustainability in NGO Outreach

Without either a price premium or preferential treatment, it was chal-
lenging for development agencies to find incentives for growers to adopt
GlobalGAP practices. While some agencies worked toward increasing
producer certification with the adapted standard, other agencies
focused more on integrating basic food safety practices into their out-
reach programs without formal certification. While the latter may have
seen certification as a long-term goal or necessity for market access, at
the time of this research they believed that it was more important to
focus on promoting “good agricultural practices.”
In asking research respondents about the types of practices that

NGOs promoted, I generally asked about “good practices” rather than
“sustainability,” which is less widely understood in the Honduran
context, especially by small-scale producers.10 It often proved difficult to
distinguish between what people saw as “good agricultural practices”
(the practices that growers should implement to improve both produc-
tion and environmental conservation) and “Good Agricultural Practices”
(the formal elements of food safety standards). Beyond semantics, the
confusion reflects the intention of the GAP standards to define agricul-
tural practices beyond the scope of food safety. The distinction between
“good agricultural practices” and Good Agricultural Practices was espe-
cially difficult to make during interviews with growers with no formal
certification; in these cases, NGOs introduced food safety practices along
with other practices meant to improve productivity or environmental
conservation, making it nearly impossible for growers to identify the
issues related specifically to “food safety.”
In comparison, respondents involved with development projects and
agencies were more often able to identify the elements of food safety
within their outreach activities. One respondent who worked for a coop-
erative that sold chemical inputs and offered marketing services and
technical assistance to producers said, “We’ve always been focused on
this, on maintaining good practices, but not as a certification, since there
isn’t one. Our technical assistance is focused on making sure that the
producers make more rational use of the products that we sell them.” A
practice commonly mentioned by development agency technicians as
addressing both good agricultural practices and GAPs was drip irrigation
systems, which they said improved efficiency by reducing water and
chemical use and improved yields. Another technician suggested that
the health component of his project, which focused on promoting clean-
liness in people’s homes and fields, indirectly promoted elements of
food safety, even though food safety certification wasn’t a specific focus
of the project. In these ways, NGO employees described how the pre-
cepts of food safety were incorporated into their outreach efforts even
when certification was not the ultimate goal.
On the other hand, some respondents were much clearer about the
delineation between basic practices and the formal GAP standards. One
development agent said:
10
Although I did avoid this term when asking about actual practices, I did ask all NGO
representatives and growers how they defined “sustainability” conceptually, and whether
they were familiar with the term.
There’s some confusion with this. Here, we promote good agri-

cultural practices—preparing the soil, beds, planting practices,
planting schedules—but what really counts as Good Agricultural
Practices would be using protective gear when applying insecti-
cides, having a place to wash pumps, proper handling of
agrichemicals, having a place to deposit empty agrichemical
containers. . . . It’s just that certification doesn’t really directly
deal with production processes. It’s more about social responsi-
bility. Social responsibility and the fact that you’re producing
products for other people in a way that’s better for the environ-
ment and environmental conservation.
This NGO employee’s claim that GAPs don’t pertain to production
practices counters a common theme in the standards literature, which
describes food safety as a process-based standard precisely because it
focuses on production processes that contribute to the end qualities of
the product (Barham 2002). Yet this claim clearly demonstrates that the
respondent equated GAPs with social responsibility toward both con-
sumers and the environment, suggesting the need to explore develop-
ment workers’ perception of the link between food safety and
sustainability.
Originally, GlobalGAP was intended to be a standard for both food
safety and sustainability, while in more recent years it has placed more
emphasis on the former (Marsden et al. 2010). However, many of the
NGO employees in this study saw a direct link between what they con-
sidered to be sustainable practices and those promoted by GlobalGAP;
indeed, one development agency staffer cited sustainability impacts as
the reason that her organization incorporated food safety training into
its programs. A technician working for the USAID project responded to
the question of what elements of GlobalGAP he considered to address
sustainability by saying, “the majority.” He went on to list basic practices,
such as bed preparation and drip irrigation, and then turned to the issue
of appropriate chemical use:
All of GlobalGAP’s requirements that have to do with using less
toxic pesticides, with reducing pesticide residue, and have to do
in general with IPM, integrated pest management, are impor-
tant. Also using protective gear, which isn’t an environmental
impact, but is a direct impact. If I, as a producer, apply pesticides
correctly, it’s less risk for myself and my family.
For many of those working for NGOs, the appropriate use of chemicals
had a clear link to environmental, economic, and social sustainability,
and their references to integrated pest management echoed the early
premises of GlobalGAP standards. Both producers and development
agency representatives cited environmental gains of avoiding contami-

nation of local water sources by reducing chemical use and disposing
properly of containers; economic gains were related to input, and there-
fore cost, reduction; and social gains were described as affecting indi-
vidual workers, farm families, and rural communities. At the same time,
they viewed reducing pesticide residue by not spraying right before
harvest as a benefit to consumers. Development agency respondents also
described how difficult it could be to change the culture around misus-
ing toxic chemicals. One staffer had heard stories of people tasting
pesticides to see if they’d been mixed properly, while another said that
the use of banned chemicals was so entrenched in some producers’
management of their farms that they didn’t believe that new, less toxic
inputs could be as effective. Therefore, respondents saw the parts of
GlobalGAP that outline appropriate pesticide use and management as
having a direct and positive impact on improving sustainability. In addi-
tion, establishing an updated list of allowed and banned chemicals for
the national government to institutionalize was high on the agenda for
development project employees, perhaps due to Global GAPs’ reliance
on local legislation for chemical use. At the time of this study, the
government had yet to adopt the list, even while it was used internally by
development projects.
While participants clearly saw the link between sustainability and food
safety when it came to chemical usage, negotiating the place of animals
and compost within farming systems was trickier. The use of manure in
general, and chicken manure in particular, emerged as a critical ques-
tion. Technicians mentioned teaching producers how to compost
manure rather than apply it raw, but also what a struggle it was to get
producers to compost properly. While many development agency rep-
resentatives and producers mentioned the importance of incorporating
organic matter into soils, and one agency in particular was active in
teaching producers how to make compost that included manure, pro-
ducers and NGO employees still viewed using manure as a high-risk
practice. As a result, some talked about discouraging the use of manure
altogether; for example, one development agency staffer answered a
question about the sustainability impacts of GAP standards by saying,
“They make sure that the use of chicken manure is eliminated, since it’s
highly contaminated with salmonella.” Some producers, concerned
about their ability to properly compost manure in keeping with the
standards, turned to chemical inputs instead, reporting that the field
technicians had told them that they were better off doing so. While
microbial contamination is a valid concern when using animal manure,
if concern over food safety provokes a shift away from appropriate
manure use, it could undermine the ability of subsistence farmers to

reduce off-farm inputs and integrate their production practices to
promote their operational sustainability. This example highlights a
potential difference between the content and implementation of food
safety standards, for while GlobalGAP officially permits the use of animal
manure if it has been fully decomposed, some people in this study
indicated that they felt more comfortable eliminating its use rather than
risking microbial contamination and its consequences.
Discussion
This research on Wal-Mart’s domestic produce supply chains in Hondu-
ras contributes to understanding how food safety standards are used to
standardize production practices while promoting quality in the context
of development projects; in this way, production practices are differen-
tiated, while the market remains standardized. In some ways, enforcing
food safety standards implicitly differentiates supermarkets from tradi-
tional, open-air markets, but supermarkets don’t actively promote this
image, nor do they discontinue relationships with noncertified growers,
as observed in other studies in Central America (Henson and Reardon
2005). While supermarket retailers are able to use standards strategically
by enrolling NGOs to enforce approved practices outside any third-party
certification system, this combination of differentiated production for
standardized markets inhibits producers’ ability to use standards strate-
gically to their own advantage.
This research suggests that producers and NGOs take on costs,
responsibilities, and risks in public-private partnerships with supermar-
kets in developing countries. In addition, food safety standards are
“normalized” through their inclusion in development projects’ out-
reach, and thereby “enforce a kind of ‘quiet coercion’ that ensure[s]
normal behavior” (Thompson and Lockie 2013:381). This normaliza-
tion influences perceptions of what constitutes sustainable agricultural
practices. Lessons from these findings that can guide future research
and development strategies include a consideration of the role of NGOs
in mediating corporate control of production processes and the
sustainability implications of implementing food safety standards in inte-
grated farming systems.
NGOs, Food Safety Standards, and Rural Development

Third-party certification is widely described as the means by which super-
market retailers and other corporations control production processes
while outsourcing responsibility for monitoring and enforcing standards

(Busch and Bain 2004; Hatanaka et al. 2005); this research suggests,
however, that the strategic alliances that have formed between super-
market retailers and development agencies in countries such as Hondu-
ras could be a new vehicle by which these companies exert control and
influence over production practices in situations where formal standards
aren’t yet fully operational.11 While GlobalGAP standards include the
precepts of a corporate version of sustainable agriculture, these stan-
dards do not include a price premium to encourage implementation of
these practices or cover the costs of compliance. This lack of a premium,
while promoting quality, stands in contrast to the values-based standards
described earlier, such as Fair Trade, which have been designed with the
specific goal of promoting development in the Global South, and
provide a price premium to support these goals (Raynolds 2000, 2009).
In the research presented here, since producers did not receive a
premium for certified produce, the onus of incentivizing and enforcing
changes in agricultural practices to produce higher-quality products fell
squarely onto participating NGOs. This role for NGOs is especially
important due to the development of mainstream, “new wave”
sustainability standards that don’t offer price premiums (such as the
Forest Stewardship Council or the Utz Kapeh sustainable coffee stan-
dard), while Fair Trade standards face increasing pressure to decrease
their premiums to stay competitive with these alternatives (Bitzer 2012;
Bitzer et al. 2012; Ponte 2008). The role of NGOs in encouraging the
adoption of new practices even without the use of formal certification
systems or price premiums is therefore an important phenomenon that
requires further research to examine how corporate demands and
market pressures influence the goals and outcomes of development
projects.
In this context, we may need to revisit questions about the effects that
private food safety standards have on small-scale producers’ ability to
participate in domestic supermarket supply chains in the Global South.
While an abundance of literature has examined the question of whether
compliance to standards has excluded growers from transnational super-
market supply chains, the findings presented here shift the question of
exclusion onto development agencies’ projects and programs. Recent
11
With the development of the localg.a.p. standard, GlobalGAP is promoting a standard
that is adapted to small-scale producers in developing countries and will potentially facili-
tate increased rates of certification. Therefore, the role of NGOs and public-private part-
nerships in enforcing new practices without formal certification may be transitional. Yet
this situation still warrants theoretical and practical consideration given the implications it
has for development projects and policies.
research from a study of Wal-Mart’s produce supply chains in Nicaragua

suggests that NGOs may play a role in integrating producers who, due to
geographic location or past farming experiences, might not otherwise be
able to participate in this market (Michelson 2013). This same study
suggests nonetheless that producers with access to water and with higher
educational levels may have an advantage in accessing the market
through NGO relationships, a finding that is supported by similar
research (Bitzer 2012).12
My research suggests that it will continue to be important to consider
producer exclusion from market-based development projects. As devel-
opment agencies act as commercial intermediaries between small-scale
growers and supermarket chains, there is tension between development
agencies’ aid-oriented missions and commercial imperatives.13 For
example, one development agency technician said of producers who
struggle to implement food safety practices, “We know that integrating a
producer like that into a supermarket like Hortifruti puts us at risk . . . of
having a bad relationship with the supermarket.” Technicians in rural
development projects that connect producers with supermarkets face
competing pressures between helping producers while still maintaining
their commercial commitments and partnerships with supermarkets
(see also Wiegel 2013). As a result, they may retract aid, or avoid formally
registering with a project a producer who they think may not be able to
adopt the practices that supermarkets require. Market-based develop-
ment interventions may exclude producers who lack the capacity to
comply with supermarkets’ private standards, whether or not formal
certification is part of the equation.
Food Safety and Sustainability

If food safety standards influence agricultural outreach in development
projects outside the context of formal certification systems, it could have
a positive influence on sustainability outcomes with relation to chemical
usage, as was the original intent of the GlobalGAP standards, and as is
supported by other research (Berdegué et al. 2005; Galt 2008). Promot-
ing chemical reduction is also in keeping with an approach that sees
sustainability as a “win-win” endeavor that can simultaneously generate
12
Interestingly, another study of Wal-Mart’s tomato value chains in Nicaragua suggests
that it is important to consider not only producers’ capacity to comply with supermarkets’
requirements, but also their willingness (Wiegel 2013). In this case, many producers were
unwilling to adopt new practices or forgo established market relationships.
13
The issue of how NGOs manage competing commercial and aid-oriented pressures
when they assume the role of intermediary by managing producers’ associations is more
fully discussed in a separate article based on this research (Bloom 2014a).
environmental and economic gains. This dual benefit of chemical reduc-

tion is especially important in situations with no price premium, when
the best way to improve incomes is cost-saving strategies (Busch 2011).
At the same time, the (dis)use of manure has some potentially trou-
bling implications for sustainability outcomes. The disruption of nutri-
ent cycles that results from separating livestock and crop production in
industrialized farming systems undermines sustainability by creating
both a need for fertilizer and a source of waste in need of disposal
(Buttel 2006; Foster 1999; Jackson-Smith 2010). The decline in inte-
grated farming systems is a major contributor to many of the environ-
mental problems associated with industrialized agricultural systems in
the Global North, including both nonpoint pollution from fertilizer
misuse and point pollution sources from concentrated livestock produc-
tion (Buttel 2006). A Westernized approach to agriculture that creates
dependence on chemical inputs is already promoted in Honduras and
other countries in the Global South (IAASTD 2008b). In Honduras,
agro-export firms and chemical companies promote the use of synthetic
fertilizers for agricultural producers; in a 2006 report, 96 percent of
surveyed producers used chemical fertilizers (Sanders et al. 2006).
Studies find relatively low uses (30 percent) of organic compost that
includes manure (Sanders et al. 2006; Wollni, Lee, and Thies 2010). At
the same time, lack of resources and access to inputs such as fertilizers
are cited as a major limitation for improving production among small-
holder producers in Honduras, especially given the rising prices of
inputs (Ruben and Van den berg 2001; Sanders et al. 2006). In this case,
organic compost that incorporates on-farm inputs such as manure could
help to support the economic sustainability of small-scale growers who
continue to raise animals for domestic consumption.
These issues point to the need to question the assumed interrelation-
ships between food safety standards and sustainability to specify which
agroecological processes food safety standards include and exclude,14 as
well as the potential unintended consequences of how standards are
translated into on-the-ground practices. These findings are supported by
other research that notes there are often differences between the intent
behind the formal standard and the actual practices (Bonanno and
Cavalcanti 2012; Ouma 2010). Standards implementation remains a
contested and negotiated space that merits further investigation.
14
For example, research based in California suggests that for producers, food safety
regulations that require a reduction in wildlife around their fields may take precedence
over the environmental benefits of increasing vegetation around fields and riparian zones,
despite their inclination to promote conservation on their farms (Stuart 2009).
Conclusion
This analysis of Wal-Mart’s domestic produce supply chains in Honduras
illustrates how forms of roll-out neoliberalism, in this case the combina-
tion of public-private partnerships and private food safety standards,
create new forms of regulation that simultaneously mitigate and per-
petuate the effects of the self-regulating market. In this study, we can see
how corporations have the opportunity to define both sustainable agri-
culture and sustainable development as their private standards are inte-
grated into development projects. Since food safety standards affect what
practices are promoted as sustainable, future research should examine
these standards closely to understand where conflicts between food
safety and sustainability may emerge, as well as what impact standards
have on the possible exclusion of producers from development projects,
and the sustainability outcomes for those who do participate. At the
same time, the improvement of domestic production and internal
markets in the Global South may strengthen small-scale growers and
improve national food production capacity (IAASTD 2008a).
While the qualitative nature of this research limits the ability to gen-
eralize to other countries or regions, the findings presented here indi-
cate important areas for supermarkets, NGOs, and policymakers to
consider as supermarkets move into new markets and rely on public-
private partnerships to develop domestic supply chains. This is true both
in the Global South, where the development model described in this
study is increasingly popular, as well as in the Global North, where
retailers such as Wal-Mart are creating sustainability initiatives that rely
on partnerships with NGOs to define and implement sustainability for
their supply chains. The possibility that public and civil society sector
organizations will bear the costs and responsibilities of enacting corpo-
rate versions of sustainability requires that these organizations be vigilant
of how their missions and activities may be affected by these partner-
ships, as well as how the normalizing effect of private standards may mask
the compromises and trade-offs that sustainability inevitably demands
(Bloom 2014b).
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Rural Sociology 80(2), 2015, pp.

Standards for Development: Food Safety and Sustainability

Abstract Public-private partnerships between supermarket retailers and

often described as the mechanism by which corporations outsource

Neoliberal Governance: The Role of Standards and

Private Standards: Standardization and Differentiation

promote self-regulation in corporate transnational supply chains (Busch

conditions. For example, Fair Trade emerged as a critique of unequal

voluntary and market-based, they increasingly predicate market access

good will of consumers in the Global North (Guthman 2007). Although

GlobalGAP: Rural Development and Sustainability

context. The original GlobalGAP standards focused on integrated

certain financial or natural resources are better able than others to

Background: Wal-Mart in Honduras and Research Methods

Development (USAID) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation4

Table 1. Selected Producer Characteristics.

tend to concentrate horticultural production for export on large land-

facilitating organization representatives about issues related to the types

seasonal and intermittent growers) that a Hortifruti employee listed as

example, she reported having to negotiate with Wal-Mart: “Wal-Mart

Representatives from development agencies also believed that more

Look. I think that on the global level people have misinter-

The issue of preferential treatment also highlighted this disconnect

notion that the Hortifruti employee contradicted, commenting that it

Promoting Quality: Food Safety and Sustainability in NGO Outreach

In asking research respondents about the types of practices that

There’s some confusion with this. Here, we promote good agri-

agency representatives cited environmental gains of avoiding contami-

manure use, it could undermine the ability of subsistence farmers to

NGOs, Food Safety Standards, and Rural Development

while outsourcing responsibility for monitoring and enforcing standards

research from a study of Wal-Mart’s produce supply chains in Nicaragua

Food Safety and Sustainability

environmental and economic gains. This dual benefit of chemical reduc-

Improvement.” Social and Cultural Impacts of Marine Fisheries 37:288–93. doi:10.1016/

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