How markets for animal and crop commodities interact with sustainable intensification

By ILRI Communications OnJanuary 16, 2012 3 Comments

‘Market pull’ for specific commodities is likely to be a key driver of sustainable intensification, both from the perspective of promoting improved crop and animal husbandry for better productivity and in providing incentives for natural resource management.
Institutional mechanisms that enable farmers and other community members to participate in markets are important, and will, in part, be addressed by this project interacting with other projects (such as USAID mission, ….) that focus on value chain development.
Comment on these questions:

What are some key factors that determine the engagement of farmers in markets?
What key commodity value chain development efforts in the Ethiopian Highlands are you aware of that could interact with our current project?
Are there existing mechanisms that provide a forum for project interaction with such development efforts?

Your comments here!
Return to the question list

Latest Comments

Michael Peters

January 27, 2012, 8:54 pm

A key factor in the value chains devlopment is likely to be an assessment of equity along the value chain in terms of benefits. I.e. who will be positively or negatively affected

Alan Duncan

January 29, 2012, 7:24 pm

Access to markets is obviously key - both markets for outputs and good input markets to enable increased productivity. Farmers engagement in markets (or lack of engagement) is a lot about risk management I guess. Maybe novel mechanisms for reducing risk e.g. insurance, diversification etc could help. Projects involving value chains for milk include the SNV BOAM project, for meat the ACDI/VOCA FEED project, for various high value commodities the Improving Productivity and Market Success (IPMS) project.

shana gillette

January 29, 2012, 9:54 pm

We are funding a graduate student project and a longterm research project that are exploring market issues--but not specifically focused on intensification: Peter Little's CHAINS (http://lcccrsp.org/research/east-africa/chains/): Climate variability, pastoralism, and commodity chains in Ethiopia and Kenya Osman Hamdan's work: CAMELS (http://lcccrsp.org/research/graduate-student-fellowships/camels/): Improving Adaptive Capacity and Market Participation of the Borana Pastoralists: A Value Chain Analysis of Live Camel and Camel Products in the Borana Plateau

Blogs

GIS modelling reveals hotspots of soil erosion in Kongwa, Tanzania

Highlights of Africa RISING closing meetings in Tanzania

Africa RISING launches manual on participatory tools for gender-transformative decision making