Madagascar is a country that suffers from political instability, partly influenced by problems related with agriculture and land grabbing. Smallholder agriculture is severely constrained by lack of appropriate and effective instruments that make up an enabling environment. Farms in Madagascar are geographically spread and the size of the market is often very limited due to limited transport infrastructure. Consequently, Madagascar’s FO’s are also geographically segmented. The result is that FO’s often work independently from each other on developing strategies and proposals on cross cutting or overarching issues. The ESFIM national workshop offered a platform to various stakeholders (FOs, NGOs, technical departments from the ministries) to expose and share their views. Given the multiplicity of on-going support activities for strengthening farmers’ access to market, workshop participants put the emphasis on an the assessment of the on-going activities and pilots before discussing and formulating a lobby strategy targeting the government. The key necessity for FO’s is to obtain information on the effectiveness of institutional arrangements for facilitating smallholder’s access to agricultural markets, which is based on a comparison of the various similar activities carried out in different locations of the countries in the framework of agricultural development project funded by different donors (IFAD, USAID, etc)
ESFIM Progress Report 2011
The ‘Support to advocacy agenda through collaborative research’ component of the ESFIM programme assists NFOs in developing countries with formulating feasible, evidence-based propositions for changes in key elements in the institutional environment that will enable effective market access for small-holders. In the annual report (ESFIM Progress report January-December 2011-En), an update of the progress of AGRINATURA research support is presented for the year 2011.
ESFIM-Madagascar Policy Isssues
The Coalition Paysanne Malgache (CPM) revised the ESFIM collaborative research proposal with the assistance of the Agrinatura researchers. The adjustment has been done on the basis of the priorities areas identified during the 2009 inception workshop but with an in depth review of each topic and a clearer definition of the terms, and underlying concepts, through exchanges of views with various member of CPM’s governing bodies. Accordingly the focus of the first selected thematic area has shifted from the ‘solution focused’ concept of Business Service Centre to the broader and more ‘problem oriented’ issue of farmers’ capacity in designing relevant marketing strategies to sale their products. CPM feels that there is a need to take stock of several initiatives and actions that have been implemented by NGOs and farmers’ organizations in Madagascar during the last years targeting the enhancement of farmers’ decisions making capacities. The second thematic area that will be investigated within the collaborative research is “Market Information Systems” looking at several on-going actions in Madagascar. These two themes will be investigated through desk studies complemented with consultation of selected resources persons. Since both issues are closely related, using information on one hand, and getting information on the other hand, the outcome of both studies will be jointly presented during a single workshop. The third area that has been selected, aims at analyzing constraints and benefits associated with collective actions for marketing. This theme will be addressed through a more in depth study, reviewing available documents on the subject, but including also case-studies through field visits and interviews of selected stakeholders in selected sites where this type of institutional arrangements is promoted. The case-studies will cover the whole range of different institutional formats of collective action for marketing agricultural product, from informal marketing group to the officially established cooperatives. Collective actions for marketing in Madagascar, and marketing cooperative in particular, have mitigated records in terms of impact. The study will provide key elements to Malagasy FO to further improve the strategies pursued to further strengthen these key institutional arrangements for empowering smallholders into market. The three studies will produce a working paper, but also “a position note” (similar to a policy brief) that will summarize the position of Malagasy FOs participating to ESFIM, to be used for advocacy proposes. During the last six months CPM has also maintain its contacts with several public administrations in the ministry of trade and ministry of agriculture. In spite of the fragile and uncertain political context, there is genuine interest from officers of these administrations to collaborate with CPM in the context of the ESFIM project, including the provision of complementary resources.
ESFIM-Madagascar Documents
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