Abstract
This article analyses the cereal-legume value chain in Malawi through a comprehensive VC Map, a SWOT exercise and a policy analysis. VC participation entails a number of challenges for smallholders. Limited access to land, technology and inputs, inadequate knowledge of market functioning, insufficient access to credit and extension services, combined with more general problems of poor infrastructures, often prevent smallholder farmers from accessing profitable market opportunities. The effectiveness of national policies (e.g., public extension service support, inputs subsidy system) oriented to increase smallholders’ market access is often constrained by inadequate financial capacity, an inefficient public extension services system and limited involvement of privates in the extension services scheme. VC interventions should distinguish between VC-ready farmers, namely those provided with the minimum conditions of external and internal factors, and non-value-chain-ready farmers. Market-based interventions (e.g., enhancing VC coordination) are needed for enhancing market access of value-chain-ready farmers. Conversely, while non-market-based interventions (e.g., investments in basic infrastructure, increasing extension services, credit and inputs access) prove necessary to build the minimum asset thresholds for non-value-chain-ready farmers’ participation in the market. A smallholder-friendly VC development relies on the role played by VC actors and the need to harmonise and improve existing policies to remove inadequacies, conflicts and overlaps in the various institutions charged with implementation.
Highlights
FAO [1] defines the food value chain (VC) as ‘the full range of farms and firms and their successive coordinated value-adding activities that produce particular raw agricultural materials and transform them into particular food products that are sold to final consumers and disposed of after use, in a manner that is profitable throughout, has broadbased benefits for society and does not permanently deplete natural resources’
VC interventions and policies need to distinguish between VC-ready farmers, namely those provided with the minimum conditions of external and internal factors, and non-value-chain-ready farmers
Based on a policy analysis, our objectives are to: (i) identify the implementation and effectiveness levels of policy instruments in the selected value chains; (ii) factors limiting the adequate implementation and effectiveness of policy instruments; (iii) changes needed to existing policy instruments to overcome their implementation and effectiveness limits; (iv) the role which other VC actors might play to ensure synergies among public and private sectors for promoting value chain development; (v) policy strategies for promoting smallholders’ value chain readiness, calibrated for ‘non-value-chain-ready smallholders’ and ‘value-chainready smallholders’; (vi) policy harmonisation to promote the development of smallholderfriendly value chains
Summary
FAO [1] defines the food value chain (VC) as ‘the full range of farms and firms and their successive coordinated value-adding activities that produce particular raw agricultural materials and transform them into particular food products that are sold to final consumers and disposed of after use, in a manner that is profitable throughout, has broadbased benefits for society and does not permanently deplete natural resources’. This definition stresses the importance of some relevant elements such as the crucial role played by vertical coordination and the concept of a sustainable distribution of value added along the chain [2,3]. VC interventions and policies need to distinguish between VC-ready farmers, namely those provided with the minimum conditions of external and internal factors, and non-value-chain-ready farmers
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