Sustainable markets and value chains
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The pressures of globalization and liberalization are creating exclusive supply chains between preferred business partners. Smallholder agriculture is poorly prepared for these changes.
A targeted effort is needed to include poorer households in value chains: organizational development, technical upgrading, management skills and access to financing are all required. KIT Chains was set up to address these issues.
Mission
We work on rural poverty alleviation by developing value chains that benefit smallholder producers in low-income countries. We integrate three dimensions of sustainability: social, ecological and economic or “people, planet, profit.”
Approach
Our work evolves around two key challenges:
1. Chain empowerment of smallholder producers
We develop strategies and tools for value creation by smallholder producers through vertical integration (chain activities) and horizontal integration (chain management).
2. Involving the private sector in poverty alleviation
We develop strategies and tools for setting up business ventures with private entrepreneurs that are both commercially viable and beneficial to poverty alleviation.
Example
Pro-poor fruit and vegetable chains in Mali
We facilitate pro-poor value chain development for crops such as onions, tomatoes, mangoes and sesame by linking producers to business partners, by building capacity in processing and by creating multi-stakeholder platforms for chain optimization.
Chain empowerment: supporting African farmers to develop markets
We organized a ‘writeshop’ with 30 practitioners involved in pro-poor value chain development in Africa in order to learn from experience and categorize chain development strategies. The results have been published in the book Chain Empowerment.
Connecting people, markets and values
Based on a series of pilot business ventures between companies in the Netherlands and small-scale entrepreneurs in low-income countries, we are developing knowledge and tools to involve the private sector in market-based solutions to poverty alleviation.
Regoverning Markets
We are a leading partner in a global research and policy support programme called Regoverning Markets that addresses the implications for small-scale producers of concentration processes in the processing and retail sectors of national and international agrifood markets.
Sustainable medicinal plant chain in India
We facilitated a public-private partnership between a Dutch importer, an Indian exporter, and fifty local farmers to cultivate and export Kutki, a CITES-listed medicinal plant previously collected in the wild.
Sustainable tuna fishing in Ghana
We are facilitating a public-private partnership between Ghanaian and Dutch companies and local small-scale fishermen to develop a sustainable chain for fresh, line-fished tuna.
Projects
Publications
- Belt, J. - Bulletin 350 - Cultivating a healthy enterprise
- Alam, G. - Bulletin 359 - Searching synergy
- Verhagen, H. - Bulletin 360 - International sustainable chain development
- Peppelenbos, L. - The Chilean miracle
- Kop, P. van de - Developing a sustainable medicinal plant chain in India
- Boselie, D. - Institutional and organisational change in agri-food systems in developing and transitional countries: identifying opportunities for smallholders
- KIT, - Chain empowerment
- Kop, P. van de - Designing for development
- Kop, P. van de - Bulletin 372 - Origin-based products
- Montville Oro, E. - Trading up
- Boomsma, M.J. - Bulletin 385 - Sustainable procurement from developing countries
- KIT, - Value chain finance
- Koning, Maurits de - Bulletin 390 - Farmers as shareholders
- Mangnus, Ellen - Dealing with small scale producers
Team members
- Steenhuijsen Piters, C.B. de
- Verkuijl, H.J.M.
- Belt, J.
- Boomsma, M.
- Arnoldus, M.
- Gildemacher, P.
- Pyburn, R.
- Mangnus, E.
- Toschi, D.
- Zaal, F