Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
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Eastern and Southern Africa (Nairobi, Kenya)
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Regional Program 1: Commercialization
In 2001 ICRISAT commissioned a report entitled Future challenges and opportunities for agricultural R&D in the semi-arid tropics (Ryan and Spencer, 2001). This was followed up by a conference on Targeting agricultural research for development in the semi-arid tropics of sub-Saharan Africa (Freeman, Rohrbach and Ackello-Ogutu, 2002). Both pieces of research touched on market versus subsistence production, and proposed that ICRISAT realign its research agenda to more explicitly address the needs of farmers who produce for the commercial market, as well as those who concentrate on subsistence production. Given here is the research strategy for the regional program on commercialization.
ICRISAT has made significant investments in understanding market prospects for its five mandate crops – legumes (chickpea, groundnut, pigeonpea) and cereals (millet and sorghum). Detailed research has identified legumes as having the greatest short-term potential for commercialization in eastern and southern Africa. Legumes contribute towards improved nutrition in a region where diets are deficient in protein, and play a role in sustainable production systems needed to overcome low and declining soil fertility.
The commercialization of legumes grown by smallholder farmers must take into account the challenges and opportunities resulting from the globalization of agri-food markets. Researchers must go beyond the generation and dissemination of new technologies and the development of input markets, since the markets for final products are the ones that drive the adoption of improved technologies and the overall growth of the supply chains.
In eastern and southern Africa, smallholder agriculture faces a formidable set of challenges – chiefly low profitability, a high degree of uncertainty, and lack of ability to meet the ever-changing requirements of final markets. Even where smallholders are able to reach economies of scale in production and marketing, their ability to sustain a market share is often threatened by their inability to respond to sudden changes in market requirements. This is further worsened by climatic variability, a characteristic of the semi-arid tropics where constant supplies cannot be maintained. The dynamic nature of markets requires innovative systems that are proactive rather than reactive to support smallholder farmers.
Evidence from recent work highlights the need for system-wide interventions that address all the challenges to which smallholder farmers are exposed. ICRISAT has therefore developed a regional agenda with the following objectives:
Achieving these objectives calls for a comprehensive approach based on the promotion of institutional, technological and organizational innovations among research centers, development agencies, and the private sector. Understanding the crucial role of the private sector in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the system constitutes a fundamental shift in the way of doing development work.
Activities will initially be targeted towards legumes to capitalize on investments in technology development and market research that will facilitate the targeting of alternative product markets.
The regional program on commercialization will contribute to ICRISAT’s goal in sub-Saharan Africa: Improved rural livelihoods, increased food security, and sustainable IGNRM throughout SSA as a result of greater impact of agricultural research for development
Intermediate goal (Impact target area)
This program will contribute most directly towards addressing the intermediate goal of ICRISAT in SSA: Generating profits and underwriting risk: Livelihood resilience of rural households strengthened through improvement and diversification of crop-livestock systems and enhancement of income generation opportunities from trade.
1. Conduct global market situation and outlook studies These studies will provide a strategic assessment of selected crops including production trends, utilization patterns, trade and technological developments.
2. Carry out value-chain analyses for selected crops in specific countries, and regions Value-chain analysis of selected legume sub-sectors will identify constraints that need to be addressed through a combination of technological interventions and organizational innovations. This will enhance the competitiveness of smallholder farmers and allow research to be targeted towards solving problems that have the highest return.
3. Coordinate value chains involving both public and private-sector actors to foster innovation The development of innovative partnerships between public and private-sector players is needed to ensure the generation of sustainable economic benefits to all partners in an equitable way..
4. Quantification of returns to compliance with alternative assurance systems There are several alternative assurance systems that are relevant to the legume sub-sector and the returns to complying with these alternative systems must be quantified before compliance systems are implemented.
5. Identify areas for research that will increase industry competitiveness There is an urgent need for improved feedback between the commercial sector and research so that research investments are directed towards the development of technologies with market-demanded traits for global competitiveness.
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