Re-Crafting the Agricultural Supply Chain to Create More Value and Benefit the Small Farmers in Developing Economies

The main objective of the proposed research to is to understand the factors that contribute to the low profitability and productivity of small farmers (those with less than 10 hectares of land) in developing countries and develop ideas for a financially sustainable intervention that leads to generation of additional value not only for the small farmers but all the other players in the value chain. This project has the potential to result in a radical value chain innovation that can have huge social and economic implications. The focus of this exploratory research spanning a period of 10 months, phase one of a larger project, will be to study the entire supply chain for one crop, Potato, in one developing country, Pakistan in order to understand the underlying issues through direct empirical field work. This phase of the project will serve as validation of the core approach and lead to a more comprehensive larger-scale intervention, phase two. The proposal for the larger project will be submitted after the data collection part of this project is complete. The project will also develop ideas for how an entrepreneurial venture aimed at changing the agricultural supply and value chain could be crafted to not only benefit the small farmers but also be financially rewarding.