14 FROM SUBSISTENCE TO PROFIT
agriculture, nutrition, and health. Investments to increase smallholder productivity should therefore be leveraged to improve nutrition and health in developing countries. Such investments could combine productivity-enhancing efforts with biofortification and biotechnology initiatives to breed nutritionally fortified varieties of staple food crops that are oſten grown by smallholder farmers and consumed by poor people in developing countries. Investments such as this can link agriculture to nutrition by creating economic value for producers and traders along with nutritional and health value for consumers. Experiences in Mozambique and Uganda with increasing the production, availability, and consumption of vitamin A–rich sweet potatoes are good examples of successful value-chain approaches (Hawkes and Ruel 2011). Countries should establish effective and transparent regulatory and monitoring systems to govern biotechnology and other emerging technologies so that producers and consumers can make timely and contextually relevant decisions about these technologies. As smallholders become active participants in the food
supply chain, their production activities increasingly have an impact on food safety and, at the same time, are affected by food safety standards. Safety regulations and monitoring systems need to be developed and implemented to ensure that agricultural intensification does not harm people’s health, but regulations must be implemented in a way that does not alienate smallholders. Institutional innovations and cooperation—such as public-private partnerships, pro- ducer organizations, and group certification—are needed to help smallholders gain access to information, technolo- gies, and training to satisfy food safety regulations, espe- cially in transforming and transformed economies. Above all, more smallholder-specific research and evidence are needed on how to integrate the agricultural, nutrition, and health sectors in ways that have the most benefits for small- holders and on how to scale up successful innovations and initiatives.
PROMOTE PRO-SMALLHOLDER VALUE CHAINS
Linking smallholders to agrifood value chains is an impor- tant component of building smallholder resistance to shocks and improving their productivity and livelihoods. However, many smallholders in transforming and trans- formed economies are unable to participate in value chains
because they cannot meet increasingly specific and strict quality standards, high volume requirements, and logis- tics specifications. For obvious reasons, companies tend to contract with larger farmers first and prefer farmers with certain nonland assets, such as irrigation or access to paved roads. Tese preferences act as barriers to small- holder participation in domestic (especially urban) and international markets. Overcoming these barriers requires institutional innovations for vertical and horizontal coordi- nation among smallholders, including group lending, rural marketing cooperatives, and producer associations. Tese mechanisms will provide smallholder farmers with reduced transaction costs, improved access to market information, and increased bargaining power. However, such coordina- tion mechanisms require strong institutional capacity and the active promotion of smallholder participation—not just membership—within these organizations to gain the maximum benefit for smallholders (Fischer and Qaim 2012). Similarly, information and communication tech- nologies (ICTs) can offer smallholder farmers a wealth of opportunities to acquire real-time market informa- tion—on, for example, prices, demand, quality standards, and weather. With this information, farmers can make beter-informed production and marketing decisions and participate more actively in value chains. Access to such technologies needs to be accompanied by efforts from the public and private sectors to improve both the information content of ICTs and the ability of potential users to employ these technologies. A related concern within current agrifood supply
chains is that roughly one-third of global food production is lost or wasted in the journey between farmers’ fields and consumers’ plates (Gustavsson et al. 2011). Most posthar- vest losses in developing countries occur before the farm- gate (not at the consumer level, as is the case in developed countries) because of factors such as poor postharvest handling and storage that increase crop vulnerability to biodeterioration, pests, and unfavorable weather (Hodges, Buzby, and Bennet 2011). Te dearth of postharvest capacity and infrastructure among smallholders and the subsequent loss of output significantly limit smallhold- ers’ profit potential, conservation of natural resources, and participation in high-value markets. In fact, evidence from Malawi shows that smallholder farmers who have access to postharvest storage technologies are more likely to adopt
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