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Trading up
Building cooperation between farmers and traders in Africa
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KIT | IIRR | L. Peppelenbos (coordinator)
Summary
In much of Africa, smallholder farmers face serious difficulties selling their produce. But farmers, along with development agencies and governments, treat the traders who market their goods with suspicion and mistrust.
Trading Up shows how traders struggle to run their businesses in the face of adverse policies and attitudes. With more respect and support, they could develop markets, add value to products, invest in new businesses, and improve the efficiency of the food distribution system. They could generate demand for farm products and help improve the incomes and livelihoods of rural people.
Trading Up’s 15 richly illustrated cases from countries as far apart as Ethiopia, Lesotho and Ghana. Commodities covered range from soybeans and coffee, to milk and wool. The book shows how relations have been strengthened between the farmers, traders, wholesalers, processors and retailers in the value chain. It describes how they have built institutions (such as market information systems) and agreed on rules (such as standard weights and quality grades) to enable agricultural markets to function better.
Series details
This book was made possible thanks to funding from Cordaid, ICCO and Oxfam Novib. Under the coordination of KIT and IIRR, the book was written by more than thirty traders, farmers and professionals from Africa, Europe and the USA, and edited by Paul Mundy.
KIT and IIRR produce publications on a variety of development themes, aimed at sharing experiences among development practitioners. This book is the second in a series about value chains in Africa. The first was Chain empowerment: Supporting African farmers to develop markets, which focused on farmer organizations and their support agencies (NGOs). A third volume is Value chain finance. Beyond microfinance for rural entrepreneurs.
Launch
Trading Up was launched during an Agri-ProFocus expert meeting on 29 September 2009 at KIT in Amsterdam. The meeting will look at the topic of traders, their role in the value chain, and their potential contributions to rural development.
Ordering information
Africa and Asia: please order through IIRR.
USA & Canada: please order through Stylus Publishing or Amazon.com.
All other areas: please order through KIT Publishers (see button below)
Series on Value Chain | ISBN 9789068326994 | KIT Publishers, Amsterdam | Paperback | 280 p. | 2008 | € 25.00 | English
Questions: tel: +31 (0)20 568 8272 , e-mail: publishers@kit.nl