Challenge
We all depend on food for our well-being. Agricultural productivity has steadily grown in recent decades and technological and institutional innovations have proliferated within agrifood markets and value chains to help reduce poverty and global food insecurity. However, the agrifood sector’s overuse and misuse of natural resources has degraded the environment and exacerbated the climate crisis and biodiversity loss. Many of the world’s poor—women and youth in particular—depend on the food system for their livelihoods (income or employment), however most jobs and livelihood in the sector are low quality and poorly paid.
Due to still widespread poverty, exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak and the war in Ukraine, at least 3 billion people globally cannot afford nutritious diets. These populations have been unable to benefit from expanding food markets. Many of these failures are rooted in markets hindered by multiple deficiencies facing smallholders and other small-scale producers, traders and processors, including poor infrastructure and market access, lack of quality standards, weak value chain integration, poor access to finance and improved technologies, and policy support failing to foster sustainability and healthy diets.
Objective
The Rethinking Food Markets Initiative aims to identify the multiple obstacles to improving smallholder and medium- and small-sized enterprises (MSME)’s returns to participation in higher value food value chains and to adopting sustainable practices. After having conducted scoping analyses of prevailing constraints and the potential and options for better market functioningan obstacles assessment, the initiative is engaging with stakeholders towill identify, test, adapt, and scale bundles of game-changing innovations, incentive schemes and policies to create more equitable and inclusive sharing of income and greater employment opportunities in growing food markets, whileand empowering women and youth and encouraging their participation within agrifood systems and, while reducing the food sector’s environmental footprint.
Activities
This objective will be accomplished through:
- Globally integrated food value chains: This strand of work focuses on increasing participation and profitability in three areas: (a) innovations to improve vertical co-ordination among global value chain actors; (b) mechanisms for upgrading product quality, including for food safety and sustainability; and (c) identifying and scaling digital innovations.
- Domestic food value chains: Researchers are focusing on improving participation and profitability of smallholder farms and agrifood small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in domestic food value chains (DFVCs) and lowering their environmental footprint through interventions in the following areas: (a) improved logistics, inclusive business models and value chain contracts; (b) product quality and food standard certification; (c) reducing food losses; (d) creating an enabling policy environment.
- Cross value chain services: Researchers are assessing and testing the potential for digital innovations in delivering finance and logistics services through inclusive business models o generate better income and employment for smallholders and agrifood small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly women and youth.
- Knowledge Platform for Inclusive and Sustainable Food Markets and Value Chains (KISM): The Rethinking Food Markets Initiative has established KISM, a research and knowledge gateway to share cutting-edge research emerging from this multidisciplinary research Initiative and to convene stakeholder dialogues to make sense of this research and improve policy coherence and market reform.
Activities to help achieve impact include:
- Improving general understanding and knowledge of food systems and food markets, and how they operate
- Identifying and testing different bundles of innovations to improve the performance of food markets in an inclusive and sustainable manner
- Offering improved data as well as modelling and knowledge tools to policy makers across public and private sectors to inform policies and for policy coherence
- Strengthening local capacity in every initiative work region for innovation and transformation of food markets
Engagement
This Initiative will work in several countries globally.
Outcomes
Proposed 3-year outcomes include:
- At least 15,000 people in households of farmers, the self-employed and workers in agrifood sectors (at least 45% women and 20% youth) benefit from piloted innovations in global value chains in three geographies.
- At least 15,000 people in households of farmers, the self-employed and workers in agrifood sectors (at least 45% women and 20% youth) benefit from piloted innovations in domestic market value chains in three geographies.
- Pilot innovations in digital technologies for a) logistics and b) finance benefit at least 4,000 agrifood small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) workers. in Bangladesh, Nigeria and Uganda. At least 45% of the pilot beneficiaries are women and 20% youth.
- Policymakers in six geographies change policies to enable scaling of innovations adopted by 10,000 smallholder farms and agrifood SMEs.
Impact
Projected impacts and benefits by 2030 include:
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POVERTY REDUCTION, LIVELIHOODS & JOBS
Market access for smallholders and agrifood SMEs is improved, raising income and increasing employment opportunities, especially for the many poor people whose livelihoods depend on small-scale agrifood activities, assisting 3.5 million people to exit poverty. |
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GENDER EQUALITY, YOUTH & SOCIAL INCLUSION
Inclusive value-chain integration increases the prospect of a decent living for 1.6 million women and 0.7 million youth by creating new, off-farm job and income opportunities. Promoting skills development, entrepreneurship and access to sustainable and digital technologies, and addressing structural and normative barriers to participation through gender-transformative approaches bundled with innovations, help close existing gaps in opportunities and empower women and youth. |
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NUTRITION, HEALTH & FOOD SECURITY
Income improvements for the poor from integrated and inclusive value chains generate commensurate improvements in food security, assisting 3.5 million people to meet their minimum dietary energy requirements. Socio-technical innovations in value chains for nutrition-rich foods also improve the availability and affordability of healthy diets for all. |
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CLIMATE ADAPTATION & MITIGATION
Testing and scaling of cost-effective and productivity-enhancing innovations contributes to climate adaptation and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, including an averted 150 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions, along value chains and provides evidence on how food market incentives can be reset to promote the diffusion of such investments and innovations. |
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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & BIODIVERSITY
A deeper understanding of the trade-offs between market efficiencies, income generation and environmental outcomes for environmentally sustainable land, water and energy use and production practices in turn furthers understanding of the evidence and tools needed to support public and private sector agents to redirect policies and investments in support of conservation of biodiversity and environmental health. |
Projected benefits are a way to illustrate reasonable orders of magnitude for impacts which could arise as a result of the impact pathways set out in the Initiative’s theories of change. In line with the 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy, Initiatives contribute to these impact pathways, along with other partners and stakeholders. CGIAR does not deliver impact alone. These projections therefore estimate plausible levels of impact to which CGIAR, with partners, contribute. They do not estimate CGIAR’s attributable share of the different impact pathways.
Partners
Launched in January 2022, the Rethinking Food Markets initiative is a collaborative effort of seven CGIAR centers, including the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), the Alliance of Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Alliance Bioversity-CIAT), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), International Water Management Institute (IWMI), and WorldFish. The initiative further collaborates with national and international partners to leverage innovations and policies that improve the functioning of food markets and value chains to address food insecurity and malnutrition, reduce poverty and income inequality, and minimize food systems’ ecological footprint.
The Rethinking Food Markets Initiative will work with a wide array of demand, innovation, and scaling partners, including funding and development partners and development banks, such as the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Banks, and the World Bank’s CGAP and International Finance Corporation. Demand and scaling partners will further involve national governments in the selected countries, as well as nationally and internationally operating private food businesses and business associations, such as, for example, Coldhubs (a logistics SME in Nigeria), East-West Seed International (an international seed and quality certification business), and local farmers’ organizations. Key innovation partners, include local research centres in each country and global research partners, such as Wageningen University and Research, Michigan State University, and the ISEAL Alliance.
Leadership
- Lead: Rob Vos (IFPRI)
- Co-lead: Christine Chege (Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT)
Header photo: A roadside fruit and vegetable market in Matunga, Mumbai, India. Photo by IITA.
