Helping Smallholder Farmers Succeed

Author: TechnoServe

Photo credit: Nile Sprague/TechnoServe

A new UN report stresses the need to recognize diversity among smallholder farmers and adopt more targeted approaches for linking farmers to markets.

Small-scale farmers like Janise Gitonga, shown here tending a passion fruit vine on her farm in Kenya, are crucial to global food security. After all, smallholder agriculture is the main source of both food and income for millions of families in the developing world. A new report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) calls for better integration of smallholder farmers into markets in order to alleviate hunger and poverty.

The report emphasizes the need for more nuanced strategies and policy-making to boost smallholder farm output. “Smallholders and small family farms are not homogeneous and face different sets of constraints to participation in markets,” the report states. Therefore, approaches for enhancing farmers’ integration and participation in markets should reflect this diversity.

TechnoServe has been working to help smallholder farmers participate in markets and improve their livelihoods for more than four decades. Programs like Project Nurture — a partnership with The Coca-Cola Company and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that aims to help more than 50,000 small-scale fruit farmers in East Africa double their incomes — utilize key strategies identified by the FAO, including supporting inclusive market development, strengthening farmer organizations and fostering private-sector investment. We understand that confronting the challenge of rural poverty requires thoughtful, market-based solutions.

Read the full FAO report.

For more information about TechnoServe’s work connecting smallholder farmers to markets download “8 Views for the G8: Business Solutions for African Smallholder farmers to Address Food Security and Nutrition”, a joint publication with Agriculture for Impact.

Bill Gates reviews One Billion Hungry

“I found [Gordon Conway’s] new book, One Billion Hungry, an interesting read and a clear roadmap for what we need to do to increase agricultural productivity and eliminate hunger in the world.”

Bill Gates, of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in his blog, The Gates Notes, recently reviewed Gordon Conway’s book, One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World.  A direct quote, “If there’s one book I’d recommend reading to get the definitive story about the state of agriculture today and what we need to focus on to increase productivity and eliminate hunger, it would be One Billion Hungry”, illustrates what Gordon was trying to achieve: a compendium of the solutions to tackling global food insecurity.  Bill Gates also stated, “For people who want to learn about the connection between agriculture and world hunger, this book may be the best broad overview of how our modern food production system is tied to agricultural practices. It’s also very readable.” Gordon Conway is a self-proclaimed optimist acknowledging the challenges we face but confronting them with solutions, but is surpassed by Bill Gates’ optimism. “In some ways, I’m more optimistic than Conway that science-driven advances can strengthen our food security.” That global thought and action leaders on international development, such as Bill Gates, are equally if not more optimistic about future progress in combating hunger is surely proof that this optimism is grounded in real evidence of change. To read his full review click here. Bill Gates also places Gordon’s book on his list of top reads for 2012.

Other reviews of the book include:

Fred Pierce for New Scientist: “If you wanted someone to come up with a grand plan to feed the world, you might be hard pressed to find a person with better credentials than Gordon Conway.”

Peter Timmer for the Wilson Quarterly: “Conway, a professor of international development at Imperial College, London…, is perhaps the most knowledgeable and distinguished agroecologist of his generation, and in One Billion Hungry he does not mince his words.”

In the New Agriculturist: “Optimism is a commendable sentiment but policymakers need more rigorous encouragement to act on the priorities outlined by Professor Conway.”

In Nature: “He ploughs through the crises, discusses methods, delves into the role of farmers as innovators, and faces up to environmental challenges. An impressive marshalling of case studies, new research and long experience from an expert in the field.”

We’d love to hear your reviews of Gordon’s book too.

Connecting Farmers to Markets Through Ethical Partners

Smallholder farmers, estimated to number some 500 million, are often disconnected from formal and export food markets. But new opportunities for linking retailers in Europe and the US with producers in Africa are emerging.

Some of the barriers smallholder farmers face in making these connections, as discussed in a new paper authored by Abbi Buxton and Bill Vorley of the International Institute for Environment and Development, include the high standard of products retailers require, timely delivery of products, and certification.

The paper discusses a four year project, which investigated new business models to address these barriers. The project was in collaboration with the Sustainable Food Laboratory, Catholic Relief Services, Rainforest Alliance and The International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The project examined four different value chains, this paper, the first in a series of four, looked at flowers in Kenya.

The Green Revolution in Retrospect

A new paper authored by Prabhu Pingali of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, details the achievements and limitations of the Green Revolution.

The Green Revolution was a product of investment in and diffusion of agricultural research and its largest success was that cereal crop production outpaced population growth, with only a small increase in land area cultivated. As examples, between 1960 and 2000 wheat yields in developing countries increased 208% while between 1960 and 1990 food supply in developing countries grew 12-13%.

Building on the work of developed countries to improve staple crops, the Green Revolution, largely through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, took high yielding varieties and adapted them to thrive in the conditions of developing countries. Indeed it is estimated that without the efforts of the CGIAR and national programmes world food and feed prices would have been 35-65% higher and average calorie availability would have declined by 11-13%. While these successes sparked further investment in agricultural research and its delivery from both public and private institutions, the post Green Revolution period saw investment in agriculture decline.

As the author points out investment in agricultural innovation is equally important now, particularly if we are to ‘sustain productivity gains, enhance smallholder competitiveness and adapt to climate change’. Evidence shows the returns to agricultural research are as high now as they were during the Green Revolution and in a recent meta-analysis have been estimated at a median annual rate of return of 40-60%.

The Green Revolution, however, was not without its shortcomings. As One Billion Hungry states, we need a new Revolution that addresses the limitations of the first, a Revolution in which there is renewed international interest due to the recent food price spikes.