Studying the effects of market access on smallholder farmers
Around 80 percent of the world’s poor reside in rural areas (FAO), with many dependent on small-scale and subsistence farming. While development actors have prioritized efforts to integrate smallholder farmers into agricultural markets, there is no comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the effects of market access interventions. To fill this gap, 3ie conducted its largest systematic review, focusing on smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries. The review offers key insights to guide policy and future research on facilitating smallholder farmers’ access to markets and improving their livelihoods.
Learning from more than two decades of market access interventions for smallholder farmers
Since the early 2000s, development actors have increasingly focused on integrating rural farmers into agricultural markets as a poverty reduction strategy. However, there has been a lack of a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the effects of such interventions. Read this blog to learn how 3ie’s latest systematic review—focusing on the scope, quality, and learning of the evidence of the effects of market interventions—addresses this gap and provides insights to support more effective donor spending and more relevant research programs. Read blog
Background
To bridge crucial evidence gaps and expand understanding of how market access impacts smallholder farmers, 3ie conducted an extensive synthesis of evidence on five types of output market access interventions. This systematic review, 3ie’s largest to date, examines the effects on agricultural productivity, socio-economic growth, food security, and nutrition outcomes for smallholder farmers.
The review synthesizes findings from 262 interventions across low- and middle-income countries, categorizing insights into five core intervention areas:
- Farm‐to‐market transport infrastructure interventions
- Access to output market information interventions
- New marketplaces or alternative marketing opportunities interventions
- Contract farming interventions
- Improved storage infrastructure and technologies interventions.
We screened 52,366 studies from academic databases and grey literature sources, and included a total of 439 relevant papers, representing 289 unique studies of 262 interventions in 53 countries in our review.
Synthesis findings
Findings reveal, by intervention areas, the contextual nuances of the effects of market access, barriers and facilitators, program costs, and evidence gaps providing key insights for future research and for policy decisions. They highlight how market access interventions can successfully integrate poor and remotely located farmers into markets and have a major role in rural development and poverty reduction in L&MICs. We find that the improvements occur through a reduction in transaction costs, adoption of improved practices, greater farm investment, access to higher prices for farmers, larger volume sold, and increased farm income. The effectiveness evidence on food security and nutrition outcomes is not conclusive. We also find little evidence regarding costs, which limits insight related to value-for-money of these interventions and prioritizing of limited resources.
