Thomas Reardon

Addressing conflict and weather shocks in agrifood value chains: Policy preferences of Nigerian maize wholesalers

The rapid global rise of agricultural drones: Evidence, drivers, impacts and an agenda for future research

Commercial small scale vegetable producers and inclusive agricultural transformation in Odisha: An introduction to the methods and hypotheses of the INCATA project

The research project “Tracking commercial small-scale producers for inclusive agricultural transformation” (INCATA) studied the relationships between commercial small-scale producers (farmers) and micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in horticulture value chains in Odisha, India. The goal was to understand whether and how these relationships could contribute to inclusive agricultural trans-formation. The project was designed to address several questions. This was based on the assumption that im-proved understanding of these dynamics will inform more effective policy design and implementation in support of inclusive agricultural transformation: 1)What factors kickstart agricultural commercialization? How do small-scale producers become commercial, how do MSMEs upstream and downstream of the farm get started, and how do these two sets of actors co-develop together? 2)To what degree does the co-development of commercial small-scale farms and supporting MSMEs translate into poverty reduction and women’s economic empowerment? Who is included, and who is excluded, or gets stuck at low levels of inclusion, or slips backward? What are the economic opportunities available for youth in the transformation process? 3)What policies and investments have the potential to accelerate the symbiotic co-development of commercial small-scale producers and MSMEs, and the inclusive effects of their co-development? To address these questions, INCATA focused on the value chain associated with commercial small-scale horticulture (vegetable cultivation) in Odisha. The vegetable value chain was selected because of the high level of participation and commercial orientation among small-scale vegetable producers, the high value of vegetable crops relative to staples, and the importance of vegetables for nutrition.