Enhanced Market Practices: Poverty Alleviation for Poor Producers in Developing Countries

Abstract

Interest in market-based solutions to reduce poverty has grown substantially in the last decade. However, missing from the core of the management conversation has been an adequate understanding of the poor as producers. Drawing on an in-depth study of market-based poverty alleviation initiatives for smallholder farmers by a nongovernmental organization in a least developed economy, this article explains how a non-state organization can reduce poverty for poor producers and improve overall market functioning. It suggests that meaningful improvements in income can be explained by the enhancement of market practices that redistribute social control toward poor producers and reduce the constraining effects of market and governance failures.