July 8, 2019
HATA Akihiko, Sanyu Consultants Inc., Japan
High profitability keeps attracting farmers, especially the next generation as we observe the senior farmers remain on cultivating while many youths are engaged in off-farm jobs in the villages of Upper Egypt. Improving Small-scale Farmers’ Market-oriented Agriculture Project (ISMAP), a technical cooperation of JICA, has developed an approach for small-scale farmers to develop their capacity for practicing farming as business from May 2104 to April 2019.
Importance of Market-oriented Agriculture in Egypt
The population of Egypt has been increasing steadily with an annual growth rate of around 2%. Accordingly, the cultivated area per capita has decreased by 18% from 2001 to 2016. Maintaining productive farmland would be a critical issue for food security in Egypt. Most of agricultural producers in Egypt are small-scale farmers. Nearly 90% of farmers are small-scale with land holdings of less than 3 feddan (acre). In order to maintain agricultural production, increasing the income of small-scale farmers is very important; otherwise these farmers will not be able to keep cultivating their land.
Meanwhile, the productivity of agricultural production in Egypt is considered high. Blessed with long sunshine hours and fertile land, the yield of major crops in Egypt is higher than the global average. This already high yield level limits the potential to increase income by increasing the yield. Marketing is, therefore, the key to increase farm income.
The ISMAP Approach
The ISMAP approach was developed in line with the concept of changing the way of thinking from “Grow and then sell” to “Grow to sell” i.e. knowing the needs of the market before selecting crops to grow, based on the SHEP approach. SHEP stands for Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment Promotion, which is a very successful project implemented in rural Kenya from 2006 to 2009 as a JICA technical cooperation and achieved a significant increase in the farm income of the smallholders.
A significant aspect of the approach compared to the conventional extension practice is the selection of crops, which is decided by the farmers according to the needs of market. ISMAP facilitates small-scale farmers to carry out the market survey by their own. Technical training program was designed based on the knowledge of the market needs captured by the farmers.
The ISMAP approach is practiced using a set of activities along with the “Extension Flow”. The flow is constructed into four stages; 1) target selection and sharing the vision of the activity, 2) awareness creation, especially awareness of market needs, 3) planning of farming activities based on the market needs, and 4) technical assistance required according to the market needs. A group of farmers who actively and consistently participate in the activity were organized to form the “Marketing Committee” The Marketing Committee led the farming planning and facilitated effective decision making and coordination between the other farmers and extension engineers in the village.
Achievements of ISMAP
The Project activities reached around 2,500 farmers from 31 villages in Minia and Assiut governorates. Among the 314 surveyed farmers, 223 farmers (71.0%) managed to increase farm income in 2017/18 season compared to 2015/16 season. Among them 83 farmers (26.4%) managed to double their farm income.
The farming style changes were also surveyed for 425 farmers. Among them 213 farmers (50%) have changed the timing of selling their produces, 141 farmers (33%) have developed new marketing channels (found new traders), 230 farmers (54%) found the quality of produces improved and 91 farmers (21%) managed to reduce the production cost.
ISMAP also engaged in economic empowerment of rural women and 715 rural women participated in the women’s empowerment activities. We observed that some of them started earning their own income. The details are reported by the booklets of the project.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR) in Egypt has established an Implementation Unit in April 2019 to extend the ISMAP approach to more areas. We expect the extension of this approach by MALR will show more evidence on the efficiency and effectiveness of cultivating farmers' capacity in agricultural marketing.
