Developing communities of practice in support of resilient value chains for sustainable food security

Value chains are an increasingly popular approach to understanding and responding to the complex policy challenges facing society, particularly evident in the context of international agricultural development and food security. However, there has been a growing recognition that value chain research and implementation in many developing area contexts has been too narrowly focused on the structural elements of production, often resulting in a lack of adaptive capacity within the chain to respond to complex change processes, and ultimately undermining their potential contribution to social-ecological resilience. In this paper, we turn to the literature dealing with “communities of practice” to help operationalize an understanding of how the social relations that underpin value chains can be better understood and supported with a view to improving the resilience of complex value chain initiatives in international development and agriculture. Drawing on a food security case study in the Caribbean, we illustrate how a community of practice approach can help stakeholders to identify policies and practices that are better able to support resilient value chains by creating and fostering the conditions necessary for adaptation and innovation