Source: Food and Agriculture Organization
Country: World
Key messages
- Smallholders’ participation in markets is crucially important for improved food security and poverty reduction.
- Attempts to improve smallholder productivity will have limited success if smallholder linkages to markets are not strengthened simultaneously.
- Limited smallholder participation in markets is not necessarily a result of a lack of commercial orientation per se, but the result of constrained choice in a risky environment.
- Smallholders are very heterogeneous, facing different types of constraints and opportunities, and will react differently to new market opportunities.
- Public policy interventions are generally needed to foster smallholder market integration.
- Policy interventions need to be prioritized and sequenced according to evidence-based diagnosis of the constraints faced by different categories of smallholders.
- Evidence-based policy-making minimizes the risks of policy failure.