Local market food sector analysis and design: the example of the yam sector in Guadeloupe

Food sectors have to face lots of hurdles today and their sustainability is called into question. We present here an original method that we developed to analyze the yam (Dioscorea sp.) food sector in Guadeloupe (FWI) and devise recommendations for its sustainable development. This three-step method aims at giving an overview of the sector by describing and analyzing the strategies and expectations of farmers, retailers and consumers. This overview makes it possible then to draw conclusions for improving the sustainability of the sector. In the first step we enquired yam farmers in order to characterize their productive strategies. We identified six different types of farms according to the importance placed on yam for income generation. In the second step we focused on marketing chains. We found that local yam is mostly traded informally via five main distribution chains that reflect farmers and retailers’ strategies. In the third step, we focused on yam consumers in order to identify ways to boost yam consumption. Focus group discussions helped us to identify the determinants of yam consumption and to devise hypotheses about ways to increase it. We then tested those hypotheses through a laboratory experiment in which we elicited consumers’ willingness to pay for different types of market signals: i) the intrinsic quality of a variety resistant to pathogens and of high testing quality, ii) a label about the local origin, iii) a label about the organic production. Our results showed that consumers were ready to pay a premium for the local and organically grown yam. We then discussed the interest of moving onto a certification scheme for the different types of farms and agents identified in the first and second stage. This study suggests that a way to improve the sustainability of the yam sector in Guadeloupe would be to mobilize farmers around acollective product qualification strategy.