Farmer organization, collective action and market access in Meso-America:

"The global agricultural economy is changing. Commodity prices are declining, and producers increasingly supply complex value chains. There is growing interest in how farmers can benefit from emerging market opportunities. Farmers are encouraged to produce high value crops and engage in value-adding activities such as agro-processing. Farmer organization and collective action are often seen as key factors in enhancing farmers' access to markets. Often too little attention is directed at a) the most appropriate types of organization, b) whether the public and/or private sector is best placed to support their formation, and c) the conditions necessary for ensuring their economic viability. This paper reports on research in Mexico and Central America that explored these issues for commodity maize and high value vegetables respectively. The benefits of farmer organization are more evident in the vegetable sector characterized by high transaction costs associated with market access. The research suggests that farmer organizations established by and directly linked to supermarkets may be more economically sustainable as opposed to organizations supported by non-governmental organizations. However, the most representative vegetable producer organizations in both Honduras and El Salvador include fewer than 5 percent of total horticultural producers. This is due to producer organizations' limited business skills and non-replicable organizational models for linking producers to markets. There is less incentive for maize farmers to organize themselves to access output markets as the transaction costs associated with market access are relatively low: there are so many buyers and sellers that farmer organizations would have little impact on, for example, prices. The benefits of farmer organization are clearer when it comes to accessing credit, seed, and fertilizer. Farmer organization is a critical factor in making markets work for the poor particularly in high value products, but the role and timing of the substantial public and private investment needed to establish and maintain these organizations is poorly understood." authors' abstractSmall-scale farmers, maize, High value agricultural products, Pro-poor growth, business development services, value chains, Collective action, small farms, Markets,

Building pathways out of poverty through climate smart agriculture and effective targeting

A focus of agricultural development is climate smart agricultural technologies and practices (CSA). Development practitioners invest in scaling these to have wider impact. Ineffective targeting stymies CSA’s contribution to poverty reduction by excluding many of the poor and/or including those for whom agriculture is not a pathway out of poverty. We propose the need to recognise differentiated livelihood pathways within smallholder agriculture, linked to farmers’ differential capacity to engage in climate risk management. A farmer and livelihoods typology provides a framework to improved targeting of CSA and to identifying where alternative interventions, such as social protection, are more appropriate

Climate-smart agriculture and non-agricultural livelihood transformation

Agricultural researchers have developed a number of agricultural technologies and practices, known collectively as climate-smart agriculture (CSA), as part of climate change adaptation and mitigation efforts. Development practitioners invest in scaling these to have a wider impact. We use the example of the Western Highlands in Guatemala to illustrate how a focus on the number of farmers adopting CSA can foster a tendency to homogenize farmers, instead of recognizing differentiation within farming populations. Poverty is endemic in the Western Highlands, and inequitable land distribution means that farmers have, on average, access to 0.06 ha per person. For many farmers, agriculture per se does not represent a pathway out of poverty, and they are increasingly reliant on non-agricultural income sources. Ineffective targeting of CSA,hence, ignores small-scale farming households’ different capacities for livelihood transformation, which are linked to the opportunities and constraints afforded by different livelihood pathways, agricultural and non-agricultural. Climate-smart interventions will often require a broader and more radical agenda that includes supporting farm households’ ability to build non-agricultural-based livelihoods. Climate risk management options that include livelihood transformation of both agricultural and non-agricultural livelihoods will require concerted cross-disciplinary research and development that encompasses a broader set of disciplines than has tended to be the case to date within the context of CSA

Looking beyond loss and damage: Reframing insurance to promote adaptation and resilience

In much of the developing world, climate change is expected to increase the risk from extreme weather events, and scaling insurance is vital to enhance agricultural risk management and adaptation among the rural poor. Insurance program impacts however too often claim impacts based on the number of farmers insured, or total payouts made; instead of documenting livelihood impacts, and/or addressing key challenges that hamper impacts on resilience. A mix of stakeholder expertise is required to design, evaluate and scale insurance programs that have the potential to enhance resilience among the rural poor. We highlight the contribution that agricultural research-for-development (AR4D) can play to help strengthening scaling efforts and evaluating the impacts of insurance on resilience

Decision-Making to Diversify Farm Systems for Climate Change Adaptation

On-farm diversification is a promising strategy for farmers to adapt to climate change. However, few recommendations exist on how to diversify farm systems in ways that best fit the agroecological and socioeconomic challenges farmers face. Farmers' ability to adopt diversification strategies is often stymied by their aversion to risk, loss of local knowledge, and limited access to agronomic and market information, this is especially the case for smallholders. We outline seven steps on how practitioners and researchers in agricultural development can work with farmers in decision-making about on-farm diversification of cropping, pasture, and agroforestry systems while taking into account these constraints. These seven steps are relevant for all types of farmers but particularly for smallholders in tropical and subtropical regions. It is these farmers who are usually most vulnerable to climate change and who are, subsequently, often the target of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions. Networks of agricultural innovation provide an enabling environment for on-farm diversification. These networks connect farmers and farmer organizations with local, national, or international private companies, public organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and research institutes. These actors can work with farmers to develop diversified production systems incorporating both high-value crops and traditional food production systems. These diversified farm systems with both food and cash crops act as a safety net in the event of price fluctuations or other disruptions to crop value chains. In this way, farmers can adapt their farm systems to climate change in ways that provide greater food security and improved income

Building resilience through climate risk insurance: Insights from agricultural research for development

Scaling insurance to transfer climate risk from the rural poor to financial markets is vital to enhance agricultural risk management in developing countries, but insurance programs need to address several challenges in order to improve resilience at scale. A mix of stakeholder expertise is required to design, evaluate and scale insurance programs with the potential to enhance resilience among the rural poor. We highlight the contribution that agricultural research for development can play by providing data, methods, impact evaluations and other research products that can help strengthen and verify the impacts of insurance on resilience at scale. These outputs are made available to the insurance industry as public goods in order to overcome challenges around, among others, data availability, targeting and design of insurance, distribution channels and use of technology, bundling with risk-reducing technologies and practices, enabling environments and smart subsidies, and capturing the full value chain

Addressing conflict through collective action in natural resource management

The food security crisis and international “land grabs” have drawn renewed attention to the role of natural resource competition in the livelihoods of the rural poor. While significant empirical research has focused on diagnosing the links between natural resource competition and (violent) conflict, much less has focused on the dynamics of whether and how resource competition can be transformed to strengthen social-ecological resilience and mitigate conflict. Focusing on this latter theme, this review synthesizes evidence from cases in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Building on an analytical framework designed to enable such comparative analysis, we present several propositions about the dynamics of conflict and collective action in natural resource management, and a series of recommendations for action. These propositions are: that collective action in natural resource management is influenced by the social-ecological and governance context, that natural resource management institutions affect the incentives for conflict or cooperation, and that the outcomes of these interactions influence future conflict risk, livelihoods, and resource sustainability. Action recommendations concern policies addressing resource tenure, conflict resolution mechanisms, and social inequalities, as well as strategies to strengthen collective action institutions in the natural resource sectors and to enable more equitable engagement by marginalized groups in dialogue and negotiation over resource access and use