Skip to main content
Feed the Future
This project is part of the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative.
  • About
subscribe

Agrilinks

Search Log In

Main Menu

  • Topics
  • Events
  • Activities
  • Tools & Training
  • Members
  • About
subscribe

This July Agrilinks Talks Markets

April Thompson

Jul 06, 2017
A woman selling beans at a local market in Chimoio, Mozambique. FAO project
A woman selling beans at a local market in Chimoio, Mozambique. FAO project

Market systems are like a living puzzle of ever-changing, interlocking forces.

Finding the missing pieces needed to complete the picture of prosperity and food security is one of the most important challenges development practitioners face.

We know raising incomes through market systems initiatives is not always sufficient to improve nutrition or ensure food security. Poor households are vulnerable to market shocks not just as consumers but also as producers. Commodity prices may suddenly dive or a weather event could wipe out a crop. Layer in the complexities of regulations, infrastructure and host of other factors that can lead a program success or failure, and it’s no wonder the development community still struggles to facilitate inclusive, sustainable market growth.

Yet big gains have been made in our understanding of how markets work and how we can help make them work better for food-insecure families and poor farmers struggling to lift themselves out of poverty. This past June, USAID leadership and select partners gathered in Dakar, Senegal to share insights and knowledge on these issues at a Global Learning and Evidence Exchange (GLEE). See a video clip of opening remarks from Beth Dunford, Assistant to the Administrator for USAID’s Bureau for Food Security, below.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll share insights from that gathering on issues ranging from trade and finance to risk and resilience. We invite technical experts and field practitioners to share their own lessons from designing and executing market systems programming in partnership with the private sector and host governments to catalyze transformative, inclusive market growth. In the meantime, we’d like to share some resources from the archives of Agrilinks and its sister site Microlinks.

  • Earlier this year, Agrilinks and Microlinks held an event delving into research on the practices of women who buy and sell as part of informal cross-border trade.  It highlighted the constraints they face, as well as the unsung contributions they make to the economy and food security in their own communities. Click here for a Q&A with the presenters.
  • The market for smallholder inputs offers huge income and productivity opportunities for smallholder famers. There are a number of promising models, including the village agrodealer model discussed in this post from World Vision.
  • The need to better integrate smallholder farmers into global markets is an important topic on Agrilinks. Learn more about Farmforce, one of many emerging products to offer farm-level traceability solutions and information management.
  • Meanwhile, Microlinks hosts a wealth of technical briefs, case studies and other resources on agricultural market systems and is home to the indispensable Value Chain Wiki. Notable among these are materials developed under the Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) project to support programming that fosters inclusive growth through markets.
  • This Framework for Inclusive Market System Development is a great starting point for those looking to better understand market systems and how they complement value chain approaches.
  • Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Beneficial Access to Output Markets is another great resource from the LEO activity, which takes a deep dive to 10 market case studies to reveal five overarching strategies to improve output market access. This report looks at smallholders’ access to input markets.
  • Blog posts on Microlinks like this also address agricultural market system analysis and provide helpful hints on how to identify constraints and opportunities, unearth the root causes of a market failure that, if addressed, can unlock prosperity for the poor.
  • This interesting piece takes a look at revisiting a project to see whether market interventions in the swine sector actually took root after project conclusion, offering some applicable lessons for all.

Do you have a great resource or lesson to share on market systems for development? Comment below, post to your account or write to the Agrilinks team(link sends e-mail). We look forward to the dialogue this month on this important topic!

Filed Under: Markets and Trade Gender Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Policy and Governance

Comments

You May Also Like

post

Food Safety Links With Trade

Read about how GLEE participants identified the challenges, hazards and risks in the value chains to learn of ways to build more food safety work into their projects in Africa.

Emanuela Montanari-Stephens

Aug 22, 2017
post

Layering Economic Growth and Nutrition: Learning from NCBA CLUSA’s Food System Approach

This blog explores using market-oriented approaches to achieve nutrition impact.

Agrilinks Team

Sep 20, 2017
post

This Month on Agrilinks: Food Safety Into Focus

To kick food safety month off, we're highlighting key resources and posts from the Agrilinks archive!

Ahmed Kablan

Adam Ahmed

Feb 28, 2018
post

2017 Year in Review: Must-See Agrilinks TV!

We’d like to thank everyone who made 2017 so fruitful for Agrilinks and share some of the year’s most popular webinars — aka, Must-See Agrilinks TV! If you didn’t have...

April Thompson

Dec 19, 2017
Follow Agrilinks:
  • Youtube
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS
Agrilinks
Achieving agriculture-led food security through knowledge sharing
MarketLinks
Market-based solutions for development
LearningLab
A collaborative learning community of development professionals
Landlinks
USAID's knowledge sharing platform focused on land tenure and property rights
Climatelinks
A global knowledge portal for climate change & development practitioners
Urbanlinks
USAID’s sharing platform for resources on sustainable urban development
Resiliencelinks
A global knowledge platform for resilience practitioners
Globalwaters
Sharing knowledge and ideas to solve global water and sanitation challenges
U.S. Agency for International Development
  • Accessibility
  • Contact
  • Help
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
The information provided on this website is not official U.S. government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.

Search Agrilinks

My Account

  • My drafts and published content
  • My profile
Sign out

Contribute To Agrilinks

  • Add a post
  • Add an event
Need help?

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest Agrilinks content.

You'll also receive invitations to upcoming Agrilinks webinars and other special announcements. We won't share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.