London based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in collaboration with Agriculture for Impact and Farm Africa has successfully organized an event on May 29th, 2013 launching two comprehensive reports that discuss issues and experience of Sub-Saharan Africa small farm holders.
The Two new reports – launched on that day are: – 1)Leaping and Learning:Linking Small Holders (SM) to Market; and 2) “8 Views for the G8:Business solutions for African Small Holder Farmers (SHFs) to address food Security and Nutrition.”
London based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in collaboration with Agriculture for Impact and Farm Africa has successfully organized an event on May 29th, 2013 launching two comprehensive reports that discuss issues and experience of Sub-Saharan Africa small farm holders.
The Two new reports – launched on that day are: – 1)Leaping and Learning:Linking Small Holders (SM) to Market; and 2) “8 Views for the G8:Business solutions for African Small Holder Farmers (SHFs) to address food Security and Nutrition.”
The first research as briefly introduced by corresponding author Steve Wiggins from ODI, highly emphasized on access to sustainable and organic markets to smallholder farmers as critical factor to reduce poverty and hunger in low-income countries. According to the report, there are around 33 million smallholder farms in sub-Saharan Africa, representing 80% of all farms in the region, and contributing up to 90% of food production in some sub-Saharan African countries. This new research examines the evidence gathered from 31 countries across sub-Saharan Africa. The following argument shows some results of the study.
Most poor farmers are not linked to markets for a variety of reasons: remoteness, low production, low farm-gate prices, and lack of information, to name a few. The research work has contributed in addressing and overcoming these market failures to increase smallholder farmers’ access to markets. As Steve briefly highlighted in his presentation the report has suggested three dimensional framework for linking smallholders to markets.
The first dimension is business case (for Smallholders and partners in the supply chain) with essential public roles in creating an enabling investment environment and providing public good and facilities – like roads, health and education services, water and other extensions. The second dimension focuses on the approach on how to make the links easy, with enabling and facilitating roles from the state/private sector like providing supplies to smallholders; and temporary support that allow wider room for learning. The third dimension is all about how to organize the links and organize the farmers.
In short, the project aimed to answer the question: how can smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa use a combination of agricultural growth and links to markets to raise their incomes and reduce poverty and hunger?
This report is commissioned by Agriculture for Impact and produced by the ODI. The full PDF version of the research can be downloaded from this link:
https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment/Public/LeapingandLearning_FINAL.pdf
The report on Linking Smallholders to Markets is complemented by a second report “8 Views for the G8: Business Solutions for African Smallholder Farmers to Address Food Security and Nutrition”. It is edited by Agriculture for Impact, which offers G8 leaders and other decision-makers a set of practical solutions and case studies from eight leading agriculture NGOs on how to connect smallholder farmers in Africa to agricultural value chains – to increase their production and productivity, improve their nutrition and boost their incomes and livelihoods.
https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/africanagriculturaldevelopment/Public/8ViewsG8-Report_FINAL.pdf
Apart from the authors, editors and producers of the reports, the event has invited a good mixture of other speakers. It combined panelist of successful entrepreneur from Africa, representatives from big donor agencies, scientists and academia who made the evening very colorful. As the moderator of the event Mark Tran from Guardian Global Development said, the event showed the revival of agricultural time which has been neglected for decades. The other four speakers were: 1) Martin Evans, Chair, Farm Africa; 2) Josephine Okot, Managing Director, Victoria Seeds Limited successful African entrepreneur from Uganda; 3) Howard-Yana Shapiro, Chief Agricultural Officer, Mars Incorporated and 4) Iris Krebber, Food Security and Land Growth and Resilience - Policy Division, Department for International Development. It was moderated by Mark Tran, Correspondent, Guardian Global Development site. The profile of the speakers can be seen from this link: http://www.odi.org.uk/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/events-documents/4995.pdf