The Private Sector and Smallholder Agriculture: Best Practices with Relevance to Mali, Zambia, India and Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper’s purpose is to assist WorldAgInfo Design Team members with a better understanding of how agricultural market practices and systems work most effectively for the poor, especially smallholders, with relevance or reference to the above developing countries. A larger context for this study is that after nearly two decades of neglect, agriculture is back on the policy agenda, for donors and poor countries alike (Timmer 2005). The most important reason for this development, according to Timmer, is a growing understanding that economic growth is the main vehicle for reducing poverty, and that growth in the agricultural sector connects the poor to growth, including smallholders, and plays an important role in overall economic development. The most severe and intractable poverty in the world is in Africa south of the Sahara, where 70% of all Africans, and nearly 90% of their poor, work primarily in agriculture. (World Bank 2000)