Connecting smallholders to markets: an analytical guide (2016)

‘Connecting Smallholders to Markets’ is the title of policy recommendations negotiated on 8- 9 June 2016 in the Committee on World Food Security, the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform deliberating on issues of food security and nutrition. Work on this
extremely important topic has been underway since 2014. It has involved multiple rounds of formal and informal consultations, including most notably a High-Level Forum held in June 2015.
The process has provided a welcome occasion for CFS members and participants to debate the issues and concepts involved, on which quite different understandings have been expressed.
This work is far-reaching, and touches not only on specific topics such as food safety standards but also questions as fundamental as ‘What is a market?’, ‘In what kinds of markets are small-scale producers actually present?’ ‘Which markets now channel most of the food consumed in the world?’ ‘What would constitute a positive way forward for relations between small-scale producers, markets and food security, and what investment and public policies would be needed to promote this?’.

This analytical guide examines how small-scale food producers’ organisations and allied civil society can use the recommendations in their national and international advocacy and how they can work together
with their governments to apply them in the context of national and regional policies and programmes. It argues that the policy recommendations illuminate the relationships of smallholders to markets in two main ways:

 

1. they recognize that the bulk of food is channelled through markets linked to local, national and regional food systems (‘territorial markets’), thereby clearly positioning these markets as foremost amongst different kinds of market systems in the context of food security and nutrition;
2. they urge governments to employ public policy to support of these territorial markets, both by strengthening territorial markets where they already exist and by opening up new spaces for these markets to take root and flourish. With such an approach, smallholders would be well equipped to meet global challenges ahead.

This publication is the fruit of two years of collective efforts by the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) working group that has been specifically dedicated to following the discussions and negotiations on ‘Connecting Smallholders to Markets’ in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The working group includes over 50 participants from different regions and constituencies. It is coordinated by Nadjirou Sall of ROPPA and Javier Sanchez of La Via Campesina, with technical facilitation by Andrea Ferrante (La Via Campesina), Mamadou Goita (IRPAD) and Nora McKeon (Terra Nuova). The full membership of the group and the history of the work undertaken can be found here.

The publication is realized with the economic support of the EU, IFAD, and the Government of France. The publication does not reflect their opinions.

The full version can be downloaded here.
An easily printable version can be downloaded here.