Commodity value

Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) faces critical challenges with more than 40 percent of its population living on less than US$1 per day and one in three people being undernourished. Yet, agriculture being the largest employer of labour in Africa, responsible for over half of export earnings has the potential to play the major role in the continent’s development. Agriculture underpins the livelihoods of over two thirds of Africa’s poor and assumes even greater importance in the continent’s poorer countries. Unfortunately agricultural productivity especially in SSA has been stagnating for many years. Low levels of land and labour productivity have meant that per capita agricultural production has fallen over the last four decades. Although agricultural research has generated many technologies with the potential to address this situation, their impact on productivity, livelihoods and quality of life has been disappointing. Among the many reasons for poor agricultural performance the way in which research has been undertaken is a key. To redress this, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has promoted the integrated agriculture research for development (IAR4D) approach based on an innovation systems framework. This brings together multiple actors along a commodity value chain to address challenges and identify opportunities to generate innovation. The approach creates a network of stakeholders or partners who are able to consider the technical, economic, social, institutional, and policy constraints in an environment. The network facilitates research and learning that not only generates new knowledge, products or technologies, but also ensures the use of research products. The IAR4D approach is being tested at three pilot research sites across SSA: in Eastern and Central Africa around Lake Kivu (Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda); Southern Africa (Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe); and West Africa (Niger and Nigeria). This has involved the establishment of 36 stakeholder innovation platforms thus: creating functional linkages between farmers, the private sector, and service organizations; integrating productivity, natural resource management, markets and policy; establishing effective mechanisms for organizing and learning processes for farmers; and ensuring action research oriented toward problem-solving and impact. There are strong indications that IAR4D is an effective concept, applicable across a broad spectrum of agricultural systems. FARA is, however, aware that there have been a few success stories in the agricultural sector across SSA, where multiple stakeholders have worked closely together to foster agricultural innovation. Documenting and identifying the reasons for these successes can further enhance the usefulness of innovation systems approaches. This is why FARA undertook this study to further stimulate discussion and understanding of how IAR4D and innovations systems approaches can be used to address the need to increase agricultural productivity in SSA, in ways that will improve the livelihoods and quality of life for Africa’s smallholder farmers.

Abstract: This paper assesses why participation in markets for small ruminants is relatively low in northern Ghana by analysing the technical and institutional constraints to innovation in smallholder small ruminant production and marketing in Lawra and Nadowli Districts. The results show that the limitations experienced by smallholders, i.e., water shortages during the dry season, high mortality and theft of livestock, persist because of institutional constraints. These include structural limitations related to availability of arable lands, weak support systems for animal production and health services delivery, community values that are skewed towards crop production more than animal husbandry, ineffective traditional and formal structures for justice delivery, and gaps in the interaction between communities and district and national level organizations such as the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, district assemblies, rural banks, and non-governmental organizations as well as traders and butchers. Confronted with such constraints, the strategies that most smallholders have adopted to be resilient entail diversified sources of livelihood, low input use in small ruminant production, and maintaining the herd as a capital stock and insurance. Only a few smallholders (i.e., ‘positive deviants’) engage in market or demand-driven production or exhibit successful strategies in small ruminant husbandry. It is argued in this paper that for the majority of smallholders, market production, which requires high levels of external inputs or intensification of resource use, is not a viable option. The main implications of the study are (1) that other institutional constraints than market access constraints should be addressed, (2) that commercial livestock production should not be idealized as the best or only option (as is being done in many contemporary interventions that aim at incorporating smallholders into commodity value chains), and (3) that different types of small ruminant system innovation pathways should be explored by making use of local positive deviants.

Abstract: The productivity of tropical agricultural commodities is affected by the health of the ecosystem. Shade tolerant crops such as coffee and cocoa benefit from environmental services provided by forested landscapes, enabling landscape design that meets biodiversity conservation and economic needs. What can motivate farmers to apply and maintain such landscape approaches? Rather than rely on a proliferation of externally funded projects new opportunities are emerging through the international market that buys these commodities. As part of their growing commitment to sustainable supply chains, major companies are supporting agroforestry approaches and requiring producers and traders to demonstrate that the source of their commodities complies with a set of principles that conserves forested landscapes and improves local livelihoods. The paper presents examples of international companies that are moving in this direction, analyzes why and how they are doing it and discusses the impact that has been measured in coffee and cocoa communities in Latin America and Africa. It particularly considers the role of standards and certification systems as a driver of this commitment to promote profitable operations, environmental conservation and social responsibility throughout the coffee and cocoa value chains. Such approaches are already being taken to scale and are no longer operating only in small niches of the market but the paper also considers the limitations to growth in this market-based approach.

Abstract: The allocation of individual time can have a ‘commodity value’ if the use of time is enjoyable. This paper investigates the commodity value of travel time in recreational activities. The study focuses on recreational boating in East Texas. After specifying a model of multisite recreational demand for boating, the commodity value of travel time to each site is estimated. Implications of the results for the analysis of outdoor recreation are discussed