Farmer organisations are being asked to expand their role in supporting commercial agricultural development among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper offers suggestions for policy and practice in support of farmer organisations. It is based on research on farmer organisations...

The roles of market systems in poverty reduction within livelihood frameworks, or in professional fields such as agricultural research that seek to promote rural development, often receive little emphasis. This paper addresses this deficiency, and provides a framework for encouraging an outlook...

This Bulletin focuses on the role of farmer organisations and their importance to innovation processes. Using numerous case studies, the authors describe experiences in managing the involvement of community-based farmer groups in agricultural R&D.

This book explains how Africa’s smallholder farmers can earn more from their crops and livestock by increasing their roles in value chains – chains that link them with consumers in Africa’s towns and cities, as well as in other countries.

Changes in how food is produced, processed and sold create significant challenges for small-scale producers, policy makers and businesses. This guide provides tools for working with agencies along the entire value chain so that modern markets can be more inclusive of small-scale producers and e...

Small-scale producers will have to adopt a market-oriented approach if they are to compete in and benefit from local and global markets. This book explains why producer organisations are key to increasing smallholder farmers’ access to and power in markets.

To reduce transaction costs, smallholder farmers must organise. But it is not easy for smallholders to gain market access through farmer-led economic organisations. This book presents approaches to providing economic services to members of producer organisations in developing countries.

This study examines linkages in the innovation system. The system produces innovations slowly, and not necessarily with substantial gains in efficiency. Research and field organisations may have links with farmers, but not with farmers’ organisations, the input suppliers, agro-industry or trade...

‘Experience capitalisation’ – the process of learning lessons from experience – has both strategic and ethical importance for NGOs that wish to become ‘learning organisations’. Based on the experiences of Handicap International and GRET, this report provides guidelines for organisations that wi...

This paper draws upon the experiences within ICCO (a Dutch NGO) and the literature on networking for development. It examines the characteristics of networks that have been successful in producing results and outcomes that contribute effectively to innovative development processes, promoting mu...