Inclusive agribusiness
These six papers by Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, the Global Development Incubator (GDI), BEAM Exchange, and Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation (CDI), explore some of the key themes in inclusive agribusiness. The first publication (PDF) discusses enabling policy environments. Inclusive agribusiness requires an enabling environment that supports competitive and efficient markets while ensuring inclusive economic benefits and environmental sustainability. The next paper (PDF) considers access to finance for smallholder farmers, and small and medium enterprises. Pressing constraints include a gap between farmers’ need and demand for financial products; elusive business model returns for financial service providers; and a mismatch between financial service provider capital needs and the type and volume of capital available from investors. Changing this trajectory will require a coordinated effort across actors. Also the issue of gender dimension is dealt with in another paper (PDF). Agribusiness development provides many opportunities to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment across the seven principal domains of inequality. To take significant steps towards achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment, it is necessary to address the causes of gender inequality rather than merely treating the symptoms. The last three papers deal with the issues of multi-stakeholder partnerships for inclusive agribusiness (PDF), inclusive business models in agriculture (PDF) and systemic approaches to inclusive agribusiness (PDF).