Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Inclusive businesses to lift smallholders out of poverty ?

At the AECF conference, from which i reported last week, i was one of the few lucky people who was given this fantastic book on "is inclusive business for you?", produced by CTA , the technical center for agricultural and rural cooperation.

It is a book that brings together cases studies from different African countries about companies that integrate or go for contract farming. It gives an amazing overview that reveals what is already happening in terms of integration on the African continent.


For me the most fascinating story presented in this book is the one from Novos Horizontes in Mozambique where contract farming was apply to the poultry sector. The particularity of this company is that the contract paid farmers based on the weight gain of the chicken, which is the only variable that a farmer can influence. It seems to be success story.

However, would it work for my chicken farm? where the chicken are not broiler (the chicken kept for meat) but a hybrid that will not gain so much weight, and should be fed on waste to reach the taste for which there might be a premium market and not per se getting too big?

The book really shows you that there is not one unique way to do contract farming. Each example in the book is different, has different products, different contracts has different objectives even within the same sector. It is a nice illustration of the fact that integration is  about setting the incentives right and to find creative solutions that fits the given context.

Get your own copy of the book from  here : http://edepot.wur.nl/310397

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