CGIAR’s Rethinking Food Markets Initiative, is undertaking studies in Uganda, Nigeria and Central America to explore the potential of bundled innovations and complementary interventions for inducing changes in market behaviour that ultimately lead to greater benefits for the poor, fairer value-added sharing in value chains, and adoption of sustainable practices.
The central questions to explore are:
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Which bundled innovations, including inclusive business models and contracts and product quality upgrading, have a high potential for increasing smallholders and SMEs’ competitiveness and profitability within traditional Domestic Food Value Chains (DFVCs)?
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How can governments, NGOs, and research centres better support the inclusive and sustainable development of DFVCs and catalyse investments that ensure uptake and scaling of bundled value chain innovations?
Background for discussion:
The rapid advance of urbanization, income growth, and foreign investment in low- and middle-income countries present huge employment and income opportunities along Domestic Food Value Chains (DFVCs) in these countries. However, smallholders, traders, processors, and distributors along DFVCs face considerable obstacles to seize such opportunities, including lack of infrastructure; low demand for higher quality products; poor access to information, inputs, and services; and high costs to coordinate actions among numerous and often informal producers and traders. Overcoming these obstacles will require coordinated interventions at multiple levels of DFVCs, from on-farm production to quality control in distribution, to improved marketing to local consumers.