Poverty Alleviation Practice and Theoretical Exploration Based on Small- Farm Household Production: A Case Study of a Small-farm “Nested Market” Poverty Alleviation Trial

Abstract

Market-oriented industry-type poverty alleviation has played an important role in targeted poverty alleviation in China, but this approach has had difficulty in obtaining comprehensive coverage of extremely poor small-farm households and faces many challenges. We therefore need to explore and innovate a variety of ways of alleviating poverty among poor small-farm households. A project for “poverty alleviation through nested market small-farm production” has been running for eight years in the villages of Taihang Mountains, Hebei Province. It started from the livelihood resources already possessed by small-farm households, then converted farm production of healthy agricultural products and local specialties into an “industry” that took ordinary urban consumers’ demand for healthy foods as the corresponding exit point and nested markets as the organizational form of transaction and interaction. The trial shows that mutual trust and participation between the rural poor and the urban population has successfully transformed poor households’ livelihood resources and social capital into income, achieving accurate, stable and sustainable poverty alleviation and highlighting the concepts of innovation, coordination, and green and shared development.