Sustained economic and income growth, a fast growing urban population, and the increasing integration of global agri-food markets are fuelling rapid growth in demand for high-value food commodities in India. This is an opportunity for farmers, especially smallholder farmers, in India to augment their incomes and use surplus family labour in the production of high-value, labour-intensive food commodities. The transition to high-value agriculture, however, is unlikely to be smooth. One of the major impediments is smallholders' lack of access to markets for high-value commodities. Local rural markets are thin, and trading in distant urban markets is not remunerative owing to high transportation and transaction costs. Besides, they also face problems in gaining access to credit, high quality inputs, improved technology, information, and services. Improving smallholders' access to markets requires close linkages between farmers, processors, traders, and retailers to coordinate supply and demand. The worldwide importance of crop production is undisputed due to its function for basic nutrition of billions of people. Yet, the emergence of global forces implies severe consequences for the organization of market value chains. These forces particularly include processes of liberalization and deregulation, the dominance of large retail groups as well as ever-changing consumer demands, leading to continuous reconfigurations of market value chains. Changes in the global agricultural economy are providing smallholders with new opportunities that also present new constraints. The demand for higher value and processed foods as well as the rise of supermarkets around the world has implications for the entire food marketing system as it alters procurement systems and introduces new quality and safety standards. Marketing systems are undergoing rapid transformation. Traditional marketing channels with ad hoc sales are being replaced by coordinated links between farmers, processors, retailers and others. As incomes increase, food consumption patterns are changing, with a greater emphasis on meat, dairy products and fruits and vegetables. Consumers are becoming more demanding in terms of quality and safety and demographic and income trends are leading to increased demand for convenience foods, together with assurances of product safety. Income growth alone cannot solve the problem of malnutrition and may in fact create problems linked to overweight and obesity. The challenge from the nutrition perspective is how to sustainably improve the quality of diets, as well as other health-nutrition related behaviours, across different populations and age groups? Overall, we could extract three strands of literature on global crop value chains: the integration of smallholders; the role of food standards; and the effect of ‘hidden’ dynamics Value chain approaches can provide useful frameworks to examine the food system and the potential to achieve improved nutritional outcomes by leveraging market-based systems. However, understanding the links between value chains, the overall business environment in which they operate, and nutrition among targeted populations is complex, involving actors and activities working across agriculture, health and nutrition, and very little evidence exists on the potential or the trade-offs involved.

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