ENABLING ENVIRONMENTS
for sustainable development
Policy incentives and intervention mechanisms: how to achieve a broad scale and lasting impact?
Many policy instruments have been used over the years to promote sustainable agricultural practices. However, successive studies have pointed out the need to turn lessons from integrated, small-scale experiments into realistic policies. A move from sectoral to convergent policy and intervention mechanisms is essential for a broad scale and lasting impact of research and development initiatives on topics such as conservation agriculture, certification and labelling of products or production processes (e.g. organic), nutrition-sensitive agriculture, registration and improved planning and management of land, and empowerment of farmers’ groups.
Farmers’ organizations and public private partnerships: how to bring agroecology to the market?
Most upland farmers are ready to grow anything provided there is a market for it. It is therefore essential to strike a balance between the volume of standard quality product farmers have to deliver to meet market and traders requirements, e.g. under an ODOP (One District One Product) contract, with the diversity they need to maintain in their farming systems to keep it resilient to ecological et economic shocks. Farmers’ organizations and public-private partnerships have a key role to play to this end, but the respective roles of the key actors (i.e. farmers, private sector and administration) need to be revisited in the light of past experiences.