Market access has been identified as oneof the foremost factors influencing the performance ofsmall-scale producers in developing countries, and inparticular least-developed countries. Smallholder access tomarkets for higher-value or differentiated agricultural andfood products (hereafter HVAF) is recognized as a vitalopportunity to enhance and diversify the livelihoods oflower-income farm households and reduce rural poverty moregenerally (World Bank 2007a). Smallholder participation inHVAF markets is typically constrained by inadequatefarm-level resources, farm-to-market logistical bottlenecks,and more general transaction costs in matching andaggregating dispersed supplies to meet buyer and consumerdemand. These traditional constraints have been amplifiedand, in some cases, surpassed by a new set of challengesassociated with compliance with product and processstandards, set and enforced by governments as well asprivate supply-chain leaders. In the face of emergingchallenges and opportunities associated with standards andserving HVAF markets, many development agencies,nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government agencies,and private companies have implemented measures to level theplaying field, strengthen specific technical orinstitutional capacities, or otherwise act to facilitatesmallholder compliance with standards and continued orincreased participation in HVAF supply chains. Suchinvestment, cost-sharing, capacity-building, orcapacity-bridging activities have expanded considerably inrecent years, especially in SSA. These initiatives havetaken varied forms and involved various entry points. Manyinitiatives have been bottom-up, focusing on smallholder(group) capacities for production, collective action,standards compliance, and so forth; others have beentop-down, seeking to better link farmers to remunerativemarkets through the efforts and enhanced capacities of leadfirms; and others have opted for intermediary models, withdonors and NGOs assuming critical supply-chain functions.Still other interventions have focused outside of specificvalue chains, seeking to strengthen the overall enablingenvironment and support services for HVAF more generally.Relatively little of this expanding field of developmentassistance has been formally evaluated to consider itscost-effectiveness and impacts. Nevertheless, there areevident signs of learning and adjustment within thedevelopment community regarding the strengths, limitations,and pitfalls of various approaches and, relatively recently,some efforts to begin to share these lessons and to bettercoordinate development assistance in this field.
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