Peeling the onion: Social regulation of the onion market, Nangarhar, Afghanistan

Abstract

Afghanistan's hope that market-driven agriculture will ensure its economic transformation demonstrates a wilful disregard of the links between the economic and political marketplaces in the country, and the pervasive rent-seeking practices of informal and formal power holders. This paper, based on a study of the onion markets in Nangarhar, a south-eastern province, reports on how an agricultural commodity market works in practice, and the ways in which social relationships regulate access to it. It is not access to credit and market information that constrains growth, as aid agencies seem to believe, but the practices of a trade elite that largely operates on informal credit and relationships of trust based on close personal networks.

Published in

Economic and Political Weekly
2015, volume: 50, number: 9, pages: 79-86
Publisher: Economic and Political Weekly

SLU Authors

• Pain, Adam

  • Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/132086