Working with Smallholders

Abstract

The purpose of Working with Smallholders handbook is to enable the development of more sustainable, resilient and productive supply chains for agribusinesses and to illustrate the substantial development impact.

Smallholder farmers are both an opportunity and a challenge for food and agribusiness companies. The predominance of smallholders in many frontier and emerging markets makes them an integral part of agribusiness supply chains. Many firms source from smallholders or are actively seeking to source from them. Calls for fairer, more inclusive supply chains will hasten this trend. Yet the development and strengthening of smallholder supply chains remains a key challenge for many IFC agribusiness clients. Working with Smallholders handbook compiles innovative solutions and cutting-edge ideas for these challenges. The handbook incorporates a diverse collection of hands-on case studies from across the world regions covering wide variety of agribusiness sectors.

The 1st edition of IFC’s Handbook Working with Smallholders (2014) has become one of IFC Agribusiness Advisory Services flagship publications and received positive feedback primarily because it strikes a good balance between serious technical content and an accessible presentation style. In the three years since the original publication there have been numerous changes in approaches and methodologies. We also have a larger compilation of lessons learnt from project implementation. Because of these changes we have prepared the 2nd edition that highlights leading trends and technologies relevant to the work with the smallholders.