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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Thu, 5 Apr 2018 18:40:30 +0000
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Hi all,

Here is the aggregated input received from everyone, on topic #5 "The importance of food businesses to small farms”
——Peter

Q5.1/4 - Question "5.1.  What kind of food businesses are important to small farms in your region? Which of these are small food businesses? Please also explain how you define small food businesses."


1/ From: Lizzy Igbine <[log in to unmask]> (Nigeria)
Food business are "entrepreneurships" run at the level of small scale communities. These food businesses rely on and patronize small scale local farmers for daily food supplies, thereby enriching the farmers and reducing post harvest losses due to lack of markets.

These have been a steady way to build the incomes of rural farmers, and reduce inaccessibility of markets due to lack of transportation.

Food businesses play a key role in the food systems of a community. It is a system that runs on its own. A farmer who sells raw food to a food seller buys prepared food to eat as he returns from the farm and uses money made from his harvests to pay for the food.
This brings expansion or increased turnover and enterprise.

The food business strengthens the community activities, off-takes readily available food stuffs and makes food easily available for farmers in the farms. Business men and women in their various workplaces have little time to cook after work and there patronage increases exchange of money as well as create jobs.


2/ From: Raja Rathinam <[log in to unmask]> (India)
I have seen the input emails of Mr.Murali and Mr Chander.
No doubt that "Mother Dairy" and other organisations are helping the small  farmers as I was also associated with these organisation at a high level in the earlier days.
But the competition is building up beyond imagination. With that the producers are not getting better return in comparison with the other stake holders like processors, wholesale agents and retailers.
In addition to this, the private company's attraction to the middle man like wholesale agents or retailers presents a challenge: If there is excess production, the processors are not taking the products.

For example, this year, there is an excess production of milk in the country as a whole. The private players are not collecting all the milk.  The cooperatives collect the milk and there is enormous delay in payments to the farmers. This presents a problem for the small and marginal farmers whose income is solely depending upon the milk business. The cooperatives say that sales are lower and therefore, there is huge stock of commodities like milk powder etc.
This blocks funds, which leads to delay in payments for the milk to the farmers.

The government is not helping to dispose of the excess milk powder. Ultimately the small and marginal farmers are the ones who suffer. We all should come forward to help the small farmers with some solutions, in this crisis situation.


3/ From: Elizabeth Kamau <[log in to unmask]> (Kenya)
I am Elizabeth Kamau working as an agribusiness officer in the FAO (UN) Kenya Office.

What kind of food businesses are important to small farms in my region? Direct selling of dairy cow or goat milk, poultry eggs, roots and tubers, fruits and vegetables that are all sold fresh and cereals and pulses.
Some farmers have also individually or collectively gained skills in food processing and value addition and sell processed products such as edible oils including peanut butter, dried fruits and vegetables, jams and juices, and milled flours composited or singly from the farm produce.

Which of these are small food businesses? The food processing enterprises, which use agricultural produce to develop food products

On the question "how you define small food businesses”: I define small food businesses as micro food marketing and/or processing enterprises whose operating capacity is low, often owned and/or run by individuals, women groups (in Kenya) etc.


4/ From: Abalo Adodo <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)
For the 2SCALE project, which is one of the largest incubators of inclusive agribusiness, any type of food business is important for small farms in its intervention areas (West and East Africa). The importance for the project is the availability of small farms that are producing a produce for food. Based on this consideration, the project targeted various produce for food consumption. Some of them are: Dairy product (milk, cheese), rabbits, soybeans, maize, rice, cassava, potatoes, vegetables, fruits (pineapple), sorghum, etc.

In order to promote these produce, and later foods after processing or not, the 2SCALE project uses an approach based on agribusiness partnerships formation with small businesses alone or a mixture of small businesses and big companies. The project links the small farms to the other actors of targeted value chains to build these inclusive agribusiness partnerships.
Because of that, it can easily observed an inclusive agribusiness partnership on rice in Benin, where small women rice processors are in collaboration with rice small farms for supplying local consumers with processed rice. These women processors use small scale processing facilities for their activities.
Or, in country like Nigeria, it can observe Friesland Campina Wanco, a Dutch based company, links with small Fulani milk producers to supply dairy products to dairy product consumers in the whole West Africa.
 Also in Kenya, it can observe African small medium industries, like Shalem, which collaborates with small sorghum farms to process sorghum in flours and supplies local consumers, especially BoP (Bottom of the Pyramid-low income) consumers.

From these examples, I can define food businesses as value chain actors who work at local level with limited technicity and processing facilities capacity or big companies with sophistical processing facilities to deliver food products to consumers. It can be local traders and/or processors, specific service providers (like transporters), and local restaurants and/or shops, big trade/processing companies. I can also make the small farms in this category, because sometimes, they don’t produce food based produce only for their own consumption (subsistence), but also to sell to their neighbors or to sell in local market by their relatives or themselves.


______

Q5.2/3 - Question "5.2.  Do food businesses in your region play an important role within the food system? How? Please provide specific examples.”

1/ From: Elizabeth Kamau <[log in to unmask]> (Kenya)
The food businesses play an important role as an outlet especially during seasons of glut of the perishable agricultural produce, thus reducing levels of post-harvest food loss and waste.

Most fruits and vegetables are seasonal in Kenya and thus periods of glut provide enough raw materials for processing.

The food businesses assist in stretching the dairy, fruit and vegetable seasonality and shelf-life hence improved food and nutritional security.

The food businesses also provide income generation diversification and employment creation especially for women and youth. Food cottage industry development among women groups have resulted in establishment of food business that provide income diversification and employment creation.


2/ From: Abalo Adodo <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)
In West Africa, local food businesses are the leading input for the food consumption of the population (rural and urban). It is not rare to see traders to go to remote places to buy and bring food produce close to where the majority of consumers lives. In this adventure, they have a lot of support from transporters.
Also, local processors work hard on some agriculture produce to transform them into edible foods. I can give the examples of soybeans in Benin or cassava in Nigeria. Consumers cannot eat soya grains or cassava tubers, but they can easily eat soya-based products like soya cheese, soya milk, soya kebab, etc. or “gari”, pounded cassava (“fufu”), “tapioca”, etc.
Generally, it is observed that the food produced by smallholders and their value chain partners is consumed by more than half of consumers of African consumers in rural and urban areas (However, I don’t have clear statistic to confirm it).




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