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Fara Agricultural Value Chain Discussion June 2013

Full compilation of two-week FARA member discussion on agricultural value chains

Very interesting discussion during the month of June 2013 on agricultural value chains in Africa sparked by the following June 5 post by Francis Kpodo about a World Bank report:

World Bank: Africa Agribusiness Report 2013 – Africa Agribusiness
Feature Story: Africa’s Agriculture and Agribusiness Markets Set to Top US$ One Trillion in 2030
http://www.africaag.org/2013/03/04/world-bank-report-2013/?goback=.gde_3241614_member_219729675

An enthusiastic value chain discussion between FARA subscribers  has continued for two weeks. I have worked value chains in the US and in Guatemala – and many of my colleagues in Africa work on projects with value chain components.

I’ve seen many value chain challenges and opportunities in my work – and so this discussion was extraordinarily interesting and enlightening for me. Thank you all very much!

I compiled all the discussions into a single Word document – I have not done any editing however. It comes in at 22 pages but can be quickly scanned.

Download the Full Discussion here.

I also posted the discussion to our June Top Resources Newsletter so that more people can learn about what FARA is doing. The newsletter contains current resources on both agriculture and on connecting smallholders to markets. Enjoy!

Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa
http://next.dgroups.org/fara-net
www.fara-africa.org
http://www.csd-i.org/storage/blog/Fara%20Agricultural%20Value%20Chain%20Discussion%20June%202013.docx

Tim Magee
Executive Director
Center for Sustainable Development

Tim Magee is the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation published by Routledge, Oxford, England.

Upcoming July Courses
International Adaptation Workshop: Designing & Funding CBA Projects. Come Study with Us September 16 in Beautiful Guatemala
This blended learning workshop will lead you through the development of a real project, in real time, in a real village, and leave you with the practical field tools to sustain it. Follow link for detailed syllabus.

  1. Conduct a participatory needs assessment with a community in your own country in preparation for the Guatemala workshop—guided by CSDi staff.
  2. Upon arriving in Guatemala, use the needs assessment to begin the development of a complete, fundable, launchable project in this 5-day training workshop.
  3. Return home and launch your project with the continued guidance of your CSDi workshop leader.

 
 Distance Learning Course: Designing & Funding Nonprofit Projects in Developed Nations
If you work with a nonprofit in a northern country working on traditional programs such as food banks, animal rescue, teen drop-in centers, homeless shelters, day care centers, community development, or environmental restoration—OL 101 for Northern Nonprofits will help you develop a sustainable, impact oriented, local project. Take this course as a live workshop. Follow the link to learn more.
 
The course will lead you through the development of a real project, in real time, and leave you with the practical tools to sustain it. For example, student projects have included efforts to help communities in Europe and North America with community development, youth employment, income generation, empowering immigrant women, the Inuit and climate change, and environmental restoration.
 
Join us on July 2 for an intensive series of courses with other students from all over the world.
Are you a donor, a development practitioner, in a job transition, or a student who wants to learn more about what works in designing impact-oriented projects? Online course participants are using our courses to develop real, on-the-ground projects with real communities—both individually and through North/South student partnerships.
 
Our online courses use each class assignment as a concrete step in developing a real project within a real community. You will take an assignment into the field and use it as a solution-oriented activity that you do together with community members—thereby finishing one component of the project you are developing in the class. And there you have it: an online field course with tangible, concrete results.
 
Visit Online Learning to see a listing of Summer Quarter courses.
 
CSDi Summer Quarter 2013: Online Development Courses—July 2, 2013
Would you like to learn about:
Advanced Courses:
 
Live Workshops for Northern Nonprofits and for International Development Organizations

International Adaptation Workshop | Northern Nonprofit Project Design | 2 Years of Gardens for Nutrition

International Adaptation Workshop | Northern Nonprofit Project Design | 2 Years of Gardens for Nutrition
Center for Sustainable Development
Special June 2013 Newsletter
A Compilation of Two Years of CSDi Food Security, Nutrition and Home Garden Resources
THIS MONTH’S NEWS
June Newsletter: Special Nutrition and Home Gardening Issue: Part 1
Malnutrition is one of the most serious challenges in development today. Tonight, over one billion people will go to bed hungry—up from 800 million in 2009. Scientific studies have shown that home gardens can provide 60% of leafy vegetables, and between 20% and 50% of all fruits and vegetables consumed by households. Home vegetable gardens have shown evidence of significantly reducing the number of malnourished children in impoverished communities. Many home gardeners are also able to sell surplus fruits and vegetables and increase family income.
This month we are providing Part 1 (we’ve published a lot!) of a two-year compilation of CSDi hands-on nutrition & home gardening resources and examples of their use. Part 2 will appear in July.
International Adaptation Workshop: Designing & Funding CBA Projects. Come Study with Us September 16 in Beautiful Guatemala
This blended learning workshop will lead you through the development of a real project, in real time, in a real village, and leave you with the practical field tools to sustain it. Follow link for a detailed syllabus.
  1. Conduct a participatory needs assessment with a community in your own country in preparation for the Guatemala workshop—guided by CSDi staff.
  2. Upon arriving in Guatemala, use the needs assessment to begin the development of a complete, fundable, launchable project in this 5-day training workshop.
  3. Return home and launch your project with the continued guidance of your CSDi workshop leader.
This five-day international training workshop—attended by international participants—will provide a system of building block activities for you to use on the ground in developing and implementing successful adaptation to climate change projects that can be co-managed and sustained by communities. We will use Tim Magee’s A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation as the text. Follow the link to search inside the electronic version to see in greater detail what the workshop will cover.
Based on use in 147 different countries, the techniques illustrated in this training course use a step-by-step progression to lead participants through problem assessment, project design, implementation, and community takeover. The course will equip you with all the tools and techniques you need to improve current project effectiveness, to introduce community-based adaptation into organizational programming and to generate new projects. This practical training course is appropriate for administrators, policymakers, and all levels of practitioners—as well as to students of development.
This is a blended course. During the month prior to the five day workshop, guided by CSDi staff, you will conduct needs assessments with a local community—in the country where you work—in preparation for the workshop. These will become the basis of your project. Arriving in Guatemala, you will begin five days developing and fine-tuning a project that will address the specific context that your community faces. As a bonus, at the end of the live workshop, upon returning home, you will return to work with your community—and launch and begin your project’s implementation—all under the support and guidance of your CSDi workshop leader. Turnkey project design through implementation.
Distance Learning Course: Designing & Funding Nonprofit Projects in Developed Nations
If you work with a nonprofit in a northern country working on traditional programs such as food banks, animal rescue, teen drop-in centers, homeless shelters, day care centers, community development, or environmental restoration—OL 101 for Northern Nonprofits will help you develop a sustainable, impact oriented, local project. Take this course as a live workshop. Follow the link to learn more.
The course will lead you through the development of a real project, in real time, and leave you with the practical tools to sustain it. For example, student projects have included efforts to help communities in Europe and North America with community development, youth employment, income generation, empowering immigrant women, the Inuit and climate change, and environmental restoration.
Best of June Resources for Nutrition and Home Gardening Projects
CSDi Links To Documents And Sites specific to this course: Food Security, Nutrition, and Home Gardens.
Healthy Harvest: A training manual for community workers in good nutrition, and the growing, preparing and processing of healthy food. Zimbabwe.
Low Input Food and Nutrition Security: There is a very good information in this book that connects nutrition to the practicalities of home gardening. Malawi.
Garden Africa – Permaculture Trainers Manual: A very thorough training manual by a great NGO with offices in London and projects in Southern Africa. South Africa.
CSDi Field Guide: Preparing and Planting Home Garden Beds. Step-by-step, simple instructions for starting a home vegetable garden including a how-to card and workshop lesson plan to use with communities.
Home Gardens for Food Security. First Step: Soil Restoration with Organic Material
Frequently people in developing countries are living in areas with depleted soil. Degraded soil erodes more rapidly because of its fine, silt-like quality. When it does rain, the rain doesn’t easily penetrate into the soil, and frequently just runs off the surface of the soil—taking soil particles with it. This impacts the soil’s ability to retain both soil moisture and valuable topsoil.
The first thing we recommend community members to do is to begin a restoration project for the soil by adding organic material.By adding organic material, you begin rebuilding a soil structure which has passageways for guiding and holding water, for supporting microorganisms, and for retaining soil nutrients. Related course: Climart Smart Agriculture.
Tropical Food Gardens: Getting Started with Nutrition in Developing Nations
I’m trying my hand at growing a tropical food garden in Guatemala in order “walk my talk” and to gain first-hand knowledge of the challenges that my food security, nutrition and home garden students living in tropical countries face in growing food.
So right now I have 7, 3′ x 10′ beds planted with the 75 varieties of seedlings which you can find on my Excel spreadsheet in the link above. I’m feeling pretty good about this because I’ve only had this garden for 10 weeks and we are already eating produce. I will be regularly posting the challenges that confront me—and that are confronting nutrition and family garden students. Related course: Food Security, Nutrition and Home Gardens.
Income Generation: $150 a Month in the Sales of Excess Vegetable Produce
My friend Ricardo in Guatemala City has a beautiful vegetable garden, but produces more than he and his wife can eat. He recently made some smart decisions about selling his excess produce.
Ricardo made some initial queries at a store that specializes in selling high quality vegetables. He showed up one day with samples of his produce—which they immediately purchased—and then asked him to bring more. In his first three months he’s averaged $150 a month in sales. Even $100 a month for many rural families in developing nations could create a change in their overall prosperity. See exactly how he did it. Related Course: Designing and Funding Sustainable Development Projects.
Join us on July 2 for an intensive series of courses with other students from all over the world.
Are you a donor, a development practitioner, in a job transition, or a student who wants to learn more about what works in designing impact-oriented projects? Online course participants are using our courses to develop real, on-the-ground projects with real communities—both individually and through North/South student partnerships.
Our online courses use each class assignment as a concrete step in developing a real project within a real community. You will take an assignment into the field and use it as a solution-oriented activity that you do together with community members—thereby finishing one component of the project you are developing in the class. And there you have it: an online field course with tangible, concrete results.
Visit Online Learning to see a listing of Summer Quarter courses.
CSDi Summer Quarter 2013: Online Development Courses—July 2, 2013
Would you like to learn about:
Advanced Courses:
Live Workshops for Northern Nonprofits and for International Development Organizations
What’s happening in the region where you live?
Please write us with your stories, thoughts and comments through Online.Learning@csd-i.org or comment on this blog. I look forward to hearing from you.
Be sure to visit CSDi’s Development Community. Join 800 colleagues in sharing resources & collaborating online.
Like us: CSDi Facebook.
Sincerely,
Tim Magee, Executive Director
Tim Magee is the author of A Field Guide to Community Based Adaptation published by Routledge, Oxford, England.
Would you like to subscribe to this newsletter?
The Center for Sustainable Development specializes in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide. CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Income generation: $150 a month in vegetable sales

Income generation: $150 a month in vegetables sales
I have several friends here in Guatemala with whom I actively trade seeds, seedlings, and excess produce from our vegetable gardens. Slowly, over time we’ve learned which varieties function well in our high altitude (1840M/6040ft) tropical climate. We have all worked on growing basic food for our families—and also for increasing valuable vitamins and micronutrients in our diets. Plus, we grow things that aren’t always available in Guatemala for cooking traditional recipes from our home countries.
 
Money and Food. In all of our online courses two of the main challenges that course participants come across are food insecurity, and a lack of income. We frequently propose to students that they investigate developing income from excess garden production; it is a very realistic way to generate extra income while at the same time fulfilling family food needs.
 
We mention that the first thing that needs to be done is to identify a market link—and to identify fruits and vegetables that markets need on a routine basis and for which they have a shortage. The types of markets that I’m speaking about could be:
  • door to door sales in your local community
  • a local open-air village market
  • a vegetable wholesaler from a big city
  • a vegetable store/grocery store
  • a hotel or restaurant in a neighboring city
Market Links
 Developing a sales relationship.

The next step is to set up a sales relationship with the identified market. If appropriate, ask your new sales contact if they can help you with training and initial inputs of things like seeds. Frequently they are happy to do this because they need the additional produce—and they want to make sure that it’s grown to the correct quality.
 
My friend Ricardo in Guatemala City has a beautiful vegetable garden—but it’s only the size of a typical backyard. However, he produces more than he and his wife can eat.
 
He recently made some smart decisions about his excess produce. He first investigated what vegetables are in demand that he is good at growing. He thought about going to some restaurants in Guatemala City but focused instead on a store that specializes in selling vegetables to affluent Guatemalans, to ex-pats and to government/NGO workers from Europe and North America. He felt this was a good idea because he realized that the store’s customers might want fruits and vegetables that are hard to find in Guatemala—but that he was already good at growing.
 
So he made some initial queries at the store and then showed up one day with samples of his produce—which they immediately purchased—and then asked him to bring more. These initial sales of his samples allowed him to evaluate and negotiate pricing.
 
Crops

In the first couple of months they have focused on purchasing from Ricardo:

  • kale (a type of cabbage)
  • limes
  • celeriac (celery root)
  • rhubarb (he got his rhubarb plants from me!)
  • Swiss chard
All things that Europeans and North Americans miss from home and would like to routinely cook with.
 
Excess garden produce = income generation. In his first three months he’s averaged $150 a month in sales. Even $100 a month for many rural families could create a change in their overall prosperity.
 
His individual his sales aren’t large—a few cents for his limes for example—but these individual sales accumulate over the course of a month.
 
Marketing/Sales Plan

Ricardo did some really smart things:

  • he met with a potential market link: the vegetable store owners
  • he told them what he was growing and what he was capable of growing
  • he asked about what kinds of products they needed on a routine basis
  • he asked their advice about what other things he should consider growing
  • he asked about quantity and quality requirements
  • he asked if they had any specialized seeds/varieties that he should use
Ricardo created a customer.
 
Now that they have seen several months of production from Ricardo—and seen the quality of his produce—they are suggesting new things that he might be able to grow for them (like parsnips).
 
Ricardo is now hoping to increase sales to $200 a month!
 
Would you like to learn about gardening for nutrition?
 
Read more about the solutions which students have developed to address community challenges.
 
 
Be sure to visit CSDi’s Development Community. Join 800 colleagues in sharing resources & collaborating online.
 

Learn more about design and implementing Community Based Development Projects.

 
Would you like to subscribe to this newsletter?
 
The Center for Sustainable Development specializes in providing sound, evidence-based information, tools and training for humanitarian development professionals worldwide. CSDi is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
 

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