07if-4973 - ESFIM: Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets
In November 2005, ECART was approached by IFAP for developing a research support programme for IFAP, mobilising their experts within the affiliated research institutes. In a meeting in February 2006, IFAP and ECART agreed on the outlines of such a partnership. From 24th to 26th of October 2007 the IFAP-ECART Workshop on “Empowering Smallholders Farmers in the Market” held in Tunis to elaborate on the research proposal. The economic and political context of agricultural markets in developing countries has undergone profound changes over the last few years. Government policies are moving away from the direct management of agricultural markets, and focus more on indirect regulation for markets to work for the poor (WDR 2001). These policy initiatives define the context within which farming business can be done, as well as the framework within which smallholder farmers’ economic organisations and institutions can be developed. The potential and room for manoeuvre of farmers’ organisations to provide economic benefit to their members is to a large extent determined by the institutional environment of the organisations. Policies, rules and regulations that together make up this institutional environment have differential outcomes for farmers vis-à-vis other groups in society. Therefore, pro-active advocacy activities are needed to adjust the institutional environment to the farmers’ needs. Therefore, there is, on the one hand, a need to ensure that government policies facilitate the development of farmers’ organisations and, on the other hand, that farmers’ organisations find more viable institutional arrangements that are effective for the current market access challenges: marketing arrangements, partnerships, effective internal organisations, marketing tools, etc. To facilitate a more fruitful relationship between research and farmers’ organisations, and stimulate a process that optimizes the learning of the involved farmer leaders, this ESFIM programme will seek a methodological set-up in which the farmers’ organisations will be protagonist in the identification of research themes that they need for developing better policy proposals or to be more effective in facilitating market access for their members. The aim of the partnership is to undertake action research supportive of the producer organisations within the growing IFAP network. This will help to propose changes in the institutional and legislative context in order to strengthen their economic organisation and institutions, and thereby their power in markets. The research will particularly focus on smallholder farmers as they have most to gain from strengthening their economic organisation.