Publication database

This report presents findings and best practices from idh's innovating partners with regards to empowering farmers through service delivery, while generating sustainable returns to their businesses. Learn more about their models’ drivers of farmer resilience, cost reduction and financial sustainability.  And get inspired, by service models helping millions of smallholder farmers out of poverty, in often remote areas and developing economies around the globe.

The paper discusses agricultural insurance subsidy in detail and draws upon available literature and case study experiences to propose good practice guidelines for the design and implementation.

Bundling agriculture insurance with other services like credit and better farm inputs is fast emerging as a possible solution to help agriculture insurance to achieve better social outcomes, make insurance more tangible and enable schemes to scale faster. There is evidence that states that access to agricultural insurance leads to significantly larger agricultural investment and riskier, yet more rewarding, production choices in agriculture. However, insurance as a standalone product may not be sufficient to overcome the binding constraints of farmers. Hence, bundling provides more value for all the players in the value chain. 

This workbook has been conceived as a practical tool for innovators working in the agricultural sector to reach and effectively serve the untapped market of women smallholder farmers in emerging economies. The workbook reviews existing resources and tools for designing and marketing products, services, and technologies, provides a way to assess barriers and opportunities for reaching the missing market of women farmers, and recommends specific tools and processes for the entire business cycle, from product design to market entry, retention, and growth.

Contract farming (CF) agreements are presently being restructured to form part of more complex Inclusive Business (IB) set-ups. Additional instruments, alongside CF, are implemented to overcome the challenges of CF and to adapt to the policy environment in which the different stakeholders operate. This paper develops a theoretical framework that gives insight into how these complex entities are structured and operate in a developing country context. It finds that a high dependence by the offtaker in the first case study stimulates a higher level of commitment and investment by this stakeholder in the contract arrangement. In turn, this increases the asset specificity aspect, which then requires safeguards to ensure the smallholders adhere to the contractual agreement. A higher dependency in this particular study also resulted in a higher number of smallholders being engaged in the contract, requiring mechanisms to efficiently monitor and coordinate them.

Inclusive business is hailed as a win-win scenario for the development of smallholder farmers and poor communities; yet there is little insight into how these inclusive businesses work and, more importantly, for whom. This book aims for a thorough understanding of the range of inclusive businesses in agriculture by examining: the structures they implement, the actors involved, and whether they are effectively inclusive of smallholders. By offering a critical assessment of inclusive businesses overall, it allows for a better perception of what works where, and under which conditions. It provides useful insights that will benefit smallholders, agri-businesses, support groups, policy makers and investors who are willing to promote more inclusive businesses, that foster a better integration of smallholders into commercial value-chains and a more equitable and sustainable agricultural sector.

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This issues indentifies barriers to scaling up inclusive businesses in agriculture and food production and offers perspectives on how inclusive industries or market systems develop. The paper presents aspirational issues for a common agenda, potential research and learning questions as well as ongoing and previous work on these issues.

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This particular issue examines why the gender dimension is essential within the context of promoting inclusive agribusiness models. It presents aspirational issues for a common agenda, potential research and learning questions and potential priority areas to address gender equality in inclusive agribusiness initiatives.

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This edition focuses on the collaboration between different actors in the global food systems and the increasing importance of multi-stakeholder platforms, networks, alliances and partnerships. It showcases aspirational issues, reasearch questions and priority areas as well as ongoing and previous work in this field.

This paper is part of a series of papers on inclusive agribusiness written for the “Towards a Global Research and Learning Agenda for Inclusive Agribusiness” workshop in March 2017. This issue outlines the research questions around the gap between the financial needs of smallholders and the supply of financial services. It identifies the areas where action is needed and gives an overview of the ongoing projects and actors that promote the smallholder finance agenda.