explores the nature of the long-term relationships in the sweet potato supply chain in Bataan, the Philippines, to reveal likewise that trust and cooperation facilitate interaction at all levels in the chain. Despite the imbalance of power that exists between producers and market intermediaries, there is a strong interdependency. The producer depends on the trader to market his or her produce while the trader depends on the producer for a regular supply of produce to secure his or her income. Besides this, traders play a vital role in providing the capital and the inputs which producers need to grow the crop. In turn, the producer is obliged to sell his or her produce to the trader after harvest. Not unexpectedly, producers who were tied to a specific trader through credit or input loans had little capacity to negotiate price and often received prices that were somewhat lower than the prevailing market price. Furthermore, traders reportedly paid higher prices to larger producers than smaller producers, presumably because of lower transaction costs. Due to the lack of transparency in market prices, producers often suspected the traders of acting opportunistically, but an examination of the price margins revealed that for most of the time, traders were offering fair and realistic farmgate prices. Trust and respect was also evident in transactions between market intermediaries. In Tagalog, the indigenous language, when one person has traded with another for many years, the bond that develops between the two is described as suki. This means that a person will always do a large part of their business with the same trader. Even when prices are higher somewhere else, the person is obliged to do business with this trader, wholesaler or retailer.