Increasing small-scale farmers’ access to agricultural markets
A&R CartonWhat is it?
Farmers need access to markets both to purchase agricultural inputs (such as fertilizers, seeds, agro-chemicals, credit, and insurance) and to sell their goods.
In remote areas of many low- and middle-income countries, transport costs are high, markets are not well connected to each other, and farmers may be isolated or marginalized, unable to interact with markets either as sellers or buyers.
This J-PAL policy insight tackles the bariers small-scale farmers face in accessing markets and gives policy recommendations on the subject.
HIGHLIGHTS
Market access may be a key ingredient to overall agricultural productivity given that high input prices, low output prices, large variation in prices offered at point of sale, and inefficient intermediary markets can all depress farmers’ incentives to invest in their business.
Facilitating market access requires policymakers to tackle big challenges often associated with large investments, like national-level infrastructure projects or market (de-)regulation.
While there is little evidence from randomized evaluations on large-scale market expansion policies and investments like road building, cross-border trade agreements, and scaling distribution networks, there are important learnings from existing research on smaller investments.