The goal of our work is to review methodologies to analyze value chains, particularly within the agribusiness sector. The first part of the analysis delves into the value chain concept, with the aim of discovering how the concept has changed from an historical perspective, and what would be an acceptable narrow definition. The second and main part of the analysis seeks to study the methodological techniques for approaching and accurately analyzing a value chain in the agribusiness sector. To such end, we will review the literature for different existing methodologies, in order to understand what steps and dimensions should be considered in a value chain study. Finally, we will identify a set of outlines that are common to all the papers obtained from the literature review to help to determine the approaches or points of view that should be considered for an agribusiness value chain analysis.

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In this paper we analyze the development strategies that may be most suitable for Latin American countries. These countries are characterized, among other things, by a relative abundant endowment of natural resources. However, a development strategy based purely on natural resource factors seems very weak and plagued with pitfalls that have hindered socio-economic development in these countries in the past. We explore an alternative strategy based on the combination of a knowledge-based/natural-resource strategy that may help to foster innovation in these countries with abundant natural resources to rely on, and in this way, promote long-term human and economic progress. Through the explanation of two cases of countries which have been able to develop successful knowledge systems we show that the concepts natural resources and innovation are potentially mutually reinforcing in promoting development for countries with rich endowments of natural resources. The implications in terms of public policy are related with the usage of a long-term innovation scoreboard, the benchmarking with other successful national innovation systems, and especially the linking of the knowledge system with the development of a strong agro-food system.

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