Points of View: Making markets work for the poor
For the past 10 years, research funded by the UK's Department for International Development through its Crop Post-Harvest Programme (DFID CPHP) has looked at some of the barriers that keep the world's poorest people from bringing their goods to market. These include storage and transport issues, the availability of market information, trust within the food chain, food quality, and food safety. Much of the research has brought about change and improved people's access to markets, but many problems remain to be resolved. To raise awareness of these issues, the two-day international seminar Beyond Agriculture: Making Markets Work for the Poor, organised by Natural Resources (NR) International and Practical Action*, brought together in London a broad spectrum of participants to discuss the road to market. Points of View highlights some of the key issues raised during the meeting.
A difficult road out of poverty
"Producers can produce anything, but to get to the
market is a long trip, and that is where we need to direct our efforts,
the trip to the market."
Duncan Warren, Crop Production Director, National Smallholders Farmers'
Association of Malawi (NASFAM)
"I think to really get poor smallholder farmers out of poverty there
is absolutely no other way than to link them to markets. Only if they
can bring their harvests to market will they have a chance to generate
income to get out of poverty and attend to all the other needs."
Mpoko Bokanga, Executive Director, African Agricultural Technology Foundation
(AATF)
"Whilst trade and marketing play an important role
in reducing poverty, there are a lot of risks involved. We may be able
to help poor farmers take more risks and earn more money, but food production
for home consumption, particularly in increasingly risky environments
with climatic variations, will remain vital. So we have to caution against
charging headlong into, 'We've all got to sell stuff and work out the
markets'."
Andrew Jowett, Director, Harvesthelp
"We are working with over 100,000 farmers, with each of them producing
under different conditions. Then you have the different characteristics
of the produce that they are coming with, and you aggregate it into huge
volumes for sale on the market. Now to try to trace it backwards to an
individual farmer is really asking too much, and I find it very difficult
to request things like that. We are striving to do it, but it is complex
and quite a long haul."
Duncan Warren, Crop Production Director, National Smallholders Farmers'
Association of Malawi (NASFAM)
"One of the key constraints is that, if our farmers only view farming
as a way of life and not as a business, they will fail to appreciate some
of the principles and skills that are required when managing a business
and the way you interact and engage with others."
Tafadzwa Marange, Regional Co-ordinator, Southern Africa, DFID Crop
Post-Harvest Programme
Finding the way forward
"I think market access has enormous potential to address poverty.
But in terms of how we are going to address it, the single most important
thing is creativity. We have to be very creative. We must drop all our
old ideas or beliefs and really go at it with very clear conviction and
open-mindedness."
K. S. Gopal, Centre for Environment Concerns (CEC)
"We often underestimate the local knowledge that people already
have. I have met traders in West Africa who do not have formal education
but are multilingual and numerate, and they can trade in different currencies.
We should build on what they already know rather than assume that, because
they are not educated, they don't know anything about trade."
Hilary Warburton, International Team Leader, Reducing Vulnerability
Programme, ITDG, UK
"Farmers know how to produce products to a high standard. We should
never underestimate farmers. They know what is good. They don't always
understand what the consumer wants, and this is where they have a problem.
And getting that information to the individual farmer, so they can understand
exactly what people want maybe thousands of miles away, is quite difficult."
David Walker, Project Leader, Natural Resources Institute (NRI)
"Probably along the value chain there is a regulatory role to be
played by governments. So, unless regulation is taken care of, I don't
think any of the other interventions will take us to the goal that we
are aiming at."
Jayantha Gunasekera, Team Leader, Markets & Livelihoods Programme,
ITDG South Asia
"We've found that there is a real bottleneck with the local
private sector, the people moving the goods into urban or overseas markets
from small-scale producers. And the only incentive to change from traditional
distribution patterns is going to be if they can increase efficiencies
in their own buying chain. So we need to find ways in which moving goods
from small-scale producers to private-sector distributors or exporters
can increase the efficiency of distribution."
Edward Milliard, Senior Advisor, Sustainable Landscapes, Conservation
International
Making markets work for the poorest
"The poor are both producers and consumers. Often there is a very
low price after harvest, when people sell their goods, and they have to
buy them back again in the lean season at very high prices. So any interventions
that we can make that will reduce the fluctuations in price will help
poor consumers."
Hilary Warburton, International Team Leader, Reducing Vulnerability
Programme, ITDG, UK
"There are various levels of markets, and I am here to see which
market is actually going to work for the poor. So, it's not road
to market. It's actually road to which market? I find here that we are
talking about domestic mass markets, which are definitely the answer for
the poor in developing countries. It's certainly not the export market.
It's certainly not the local market. But it is something in between."
Guru Naik, Director, Christian Children's Fund, India (previously
with Livelihood Solutions)
"Putting in our resources to address the problems of the poorest
of the poor needs a different approach altogether. Their resources and
their capacity to venture into the markets are very limited, and therefore
all our efforts usually end up not achieving the desired results. So we
advocate working with the motivated farmers, and through that the results
will trickle down to the poorest of the poor and will pull them up as
well."
Duncan Warren, Crop Production Director, National Smallholders Farmers'
Association of Malawi (NASFAM)
"How do we help the poor? We must facilitate the top also and the
middle also so they can purchase what the poor farmer has produced."
Kwasi Oware, Chairman, Ghana Rural Cassava/Sweet Potato Producers
Association
"If you are going to engage in a market chain you have to be able
to take some risk. It may well be that the very poorest of the poor are
not people who can engage in market chains easily. But there are many
ways that markets and the processes that support market chains can benefit
poor people."
Jim Harvey, Head, Livelihoods Advisors, Department for International
Development (DFID)
All moving together
"If you want to try to develop markets, it's important to work at
both ends - both at the producers' and the consumers', and with
all the intermediaries and research organisations. And then determine
what linkages are strong and where are they weak, so that people can work
on those linkages over a period a time and make them strong."
Shambu Prasad, Director, Centre for Research on Innovation and Science
Policy (CRISP)
"Policymakers should be more responsive towards ensuring market
access for poor people. And I think some kind of policy should be considered
to make institutions more responsive to poor people who are engaged in
production."
Abdul Rob, Markets and Livelihoods Programme, ITDG Bangladesh
"We really have to collaborate to bring poor farmers closer to whatever
we do, so that we do demand-driven research. Because it is only when farmers,
researchers and extension officers come together that we will be able
to develop processes that will help the market."
Professor E. Owuse-Bennoah, Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research, Ghana
"If you look at Mozambique, for example, infrastructure like roads
and storage facilities are not there. Or, if they are there, they are
very poor. So we need to show governments that it is important to rehabilitate
all that infrastructure so that the private sector will be more involved
in the process."
Alfredo Chaumusso, Project Manager, CARE Mozambique
"The issue of market access is going to depend on farmer organisations.
One role for the public domain is to ensure that farmers are organised
and that the issue of standards is brought to bear so that farmers are
able to access markets. If they are organised, small-scale farmers will
be able to produce better quality products in a sustainable manner."
Joseph Orykot, Technical Services Manager, National Agricultural Advisory
Service (NAADS), Uganda
"I think most of us focus on quick gains that might be achieved
now, but the development of markets needs sustained support for at least
5-10 years. So assuring sustainability is an issue that needs to be addressed."
Zinash Sileshi, Senior Resource Person, Forum for Agricultural Research
in Africa (FARA)
