The Small Farmer Can

An elusive dream of donors is to show that their international development projects lift thousands of families out of poverty. International aid does an enormous amount of good for the world's poor, but when the projects end the beneficiaries remain poor. There is no clear evidence to show that international aid has actually been responsible for reducing poverty.

Three paradigm shifts are needed to steer international aid programs in the right direction to help people overcome poverty. First, the buyer should be recognized as the central figure linking suppliers with market demand. Second, development projects should help people respond to market opportunities. Third, instead of seeking project success, development programs should emphasize client success.

Buyer-led: Development projects should not select poor communities to become the targets for assistance. Instead they should approach buyers, found largely in commercial urban centers, and then link back to potential suppliers. Often the buyers will take the projects into unfamiliar territory, not necessarily where the project might have targeted, but where poverty is still rife.

Supplier response: Most buyers find small producers to be problematic-poorly prepared, not organized for productive purposes, politicized, skeptical of "outsiders", and often located in remote areas with limited infrastructure. Those are just the situations where international development programs can be of most help.

Client success: Small producers should be seen as clients, not as beneficiaries. We should focus on their success in carrying out productive activities to become serious supplies in value chains. Successful projects often weaken the production chain by providing subsidized inputs and services.

A USAID-funded project made these paradigm shifts and attained impressive results. Project monitoring and external data sources showed that 10,000 rural families in Bolivia overcame the barrier of extreme poverty as a direct result of project support. The analysis and experience are reported in The Small Farmer Can: Buyer-Led Approach Rescues Rural Bolivian Families from Poverty by Preston S. Pattie.

Following the market- or buyer-led approach, the project facilitated contacts with domestic and foreign buyers of more than 25 different products and helped rural families respond to market demand by organizing to become serious suppliers.

Dettagli