Creating shared value through partnerships in agricultural production in Sri Lanka

This critical review examines the political economy of strategic partnerships between development agencies and the private sector as a process of shared value creation in agricultural production. In doing so, it critically reflects on the partnerships that introduce contract farming and examines the case of Sri Lanka. It concludes that such arrangements do not address the underlying causes of poverty that affect communities in the developing countries, although it may increase the income of the participating farmers. Partnerships formed to create shared value alternatively function as institutional frameworks for legitimising flexible accumulation and accumulation by dispossession that reproduce the root causes of poverty in the spaces of agricultural production.