Agricultural markets and small-scale producers : Access and risk management ; Information note

This information note is part of the European Commission's Agenda for Change, in which sustainable agriculture is a priority. It begins with an executive summary (Chapter 2), followed by a discussion of the importance of smallholder access to agricultural markets in Chapter 3. Chapters 4 to 7 provide a review of some of the tools that help bring about such access: Market information systems (MIS) Inventory credit (IC) or the warehouse receipt system Agricultural commodity exchanges (ACE) Contract farming (CF) In addition to MIS, IC and CF, two risk management tools that have recently emerged are briefly examined in Chapter 8: Index-based insurance Smoothing funds Chapter 9 deals with EU cooperation with regard to the aforementioned tools, and examples of measures are set out in Annexes 5 (a), (b), and (c). The paper concludes with a series of general recommendations (Chapter 10). The study conducted for the Commission on which this information note is based is entitled Review of some approaches to support small-scale producers in developing countries for the marketing of agricultural products, including market information systems (MIS), agricultural commodity exchanges (ACE) and contract farming (CF). Available on the Capacity4Dev site, it contains case studies and observations that may be a useful complement to this document.