Authors Jon Hellin and Sophie Higman traveled the backroads of South America for 12 months visiting smallholder farms and researching the access they have to national and global markets.
To date, economic globalization has benefitted a few individuals and corporations in the world's most developed countries with little obvious return to the developing world. Finding ways to bring some of the benefits of globalization to rural South America and to help smallholder farmers derive a sustainable livelihood from their new-found access to world markets is the primary intent of this study.
"The fair trade market offers the best hope of decent prices for farmers because the prices does not drop with increasing supply," Hellin and Higman explain. "The answer may lie in making fair trade mainstream; taking fair trade out of its niche and ensuring that some of the principles behind the movement are adopted more widely." |
 If smallholder farmers are to take advantage of the market, they need to be able to seek out and develop opportunities. In particular, for them to benefit from the niche markets such as organic, fair trade, gourmet and FSC certified markets, they need marketing skills. Farmers we met often complained during interviews that 'there is no market for our produce'. Perhaps a more accurate view is that there is no market for the quality and quantity of produce smallholders can typically offer. Smallholder farming is linked to reductions in rural poverty and inequality. Acoording to the World Bank, growth in agricultural incomes is particularly effective at reducing rural poverty because it has a knock-on or multiplier effect on local markets for other goods and services provided by non-farm rural poor such as construction, manufacturing and repairs. Strong agricultural growth has been a feature of countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia and China that have successfully reduced poverty. |
