Smallholder Market Participation: Concepts and Evidence from Eastern and Southern Africa

by Christopher B. Barrett, July 2007

Paper prepared for Prepared for FAO workshop on Staple Food Trade and Market Policy Options for Promoting Development in Eastern and Southern Africa, Rome, March 1-2, 2007.

Abstract

This paper reviews the evidence on smallholder market participation, with a focus on staple foodgrains (i.e., cereals) in eastern and southern Africa, in an effort to help better identify what interventions are most likely to break smallholders out of the semi-subsistence poverty trap that appears to ensnare much of rural Africa. The conceptual and empirical evidence suggests that interventions aimed at facilitating smallholder organization, at reducing the costs of intermarket commerce, and, perhaps especially, at improving poorer households' access to improved technologies and productive assets are central to stimulating smallholder market participation and escape from semi-subsistence poverty traps.

Available for download at http://aem.cornell.edu/faculty_sites/cbb2/papers/Smallholder%20Market%20Participation%20July%202007.pdf