AUTHOR=Bello-Bravo Julia , Brito Luiz F. , Mamani Mamani Gerardo Cornelio , Cáceres Cabana Yezelia Danira 
  
TITLE=Reconsidering the middleman: asymmetries in a direct-contact producer-buyer alpaca fiber roundtable in Peru
  
JOURNAL=Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice
  
VOLUME=Volume 16 - 2026
  
YEAR=2026
  
URL=https://www.frontierspartnerships.org/journals/pastoralism-research-policy-and-practice/articles/10.3389/past.2026.16455
  
DOI=10.3389/past.2026.16455
  
ISSN=2041-7136
  
ABSTRACT=Disintermediation is often presented as a means of improving producer welfare by “cutting out the middleman” and allowing producers and buyers to transact directly. However, from the perspective of transaction cost economics, information asymmetry, and market-access theory, removing intermediaries does not eliminate the functions they perform; rather, it reallocates search, verification, liquidity, risk-bearing, aggregation, and enforcement costs to other actors or infrastructures, often producers. This theory-informed qualitative case study examines a state-convened alpaca-fiber business roundtable held in Arequipa, Peru, where 17 producer associations from seven high-Andean regions met with 5 buyer firms in a structured direct-contact format. Drawing on observational field notes, analytic debriefings, thematic coding, and event documents, the study analyzes how disintermediation shaped bargaining power between alpaca-fiber producers and buyers. Findings show that the roundtable reduced buyer search costs and generated public reference prices above some traditional intermediary offers, but did not substantially redistribute bargaining power to producers. Instead, formerly intermediary functions reappeared as producer-side obligations organized through buyer-defined standards, sample comparability, laboratory verification, certification, minimum-volume requirements, delayed payment, logistics, and weak post-event enforceability. These dynamics were especially consequential in a pastoralist fiber economy where product value depends on technical grading, trusted classification, aggregation capacity, and culturally situated forms of exchange. The study argues that improving producer outcomes requires more than simply direct contact, but producer-centered transaction infrastructures, including independent sampling and testing, transparent price records, enforceable purchase-intention mechanisms, stronger producer coalitions, and digital or face-to-face intermediation designed around Indigenous data sovereignty and the practical knowledge, values, and way of life of traditional alpaca pastoralism.