Policy Note
By Martin Paul Jr Tabe-Ojong and Kibrom Abay
Agri-food value chains continue to trigger significant interest in both research and public policy discourse. This is not surprising given the importance and resilience of the agri-food value chains in domestic and global food systems. The transition of smallholder farmers from production geared towards meeting household food demands to production for maximizing income and profitability motives is of key importance for developing countries (Otsuka et al. 2016). Typically, agricultural households in many African countries only participate in agricultural production and marketing to satisfy their household food demands. Theoretically, households in the upstream segment may decide to produce low-value crops for consumption purposes or high-value crops for profitability motives. In leveraging these production and consumption decisions, smallholder farmers in Africa face a myriad of challenges including but not limited to low productivity, market failures, credit constraints, and high transaction costs which deter them from participating in markets (Bellemare et al. 2022).
Click here to read the paper
Click here to browse publications
Share this post on social media
