Oh
the Road to High-Value Production
Linking
tropical farmers to new markets
The marketplace at Punata,
Cochabamba Department, Bolivia.
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Globally speaking, changes in the human diet
over the past few decades have been nothing short of remarkable.
We now eat more vegetables, fruits, meat, dairy products,
and fish than ever before, relying far less on traditional
staple grains and other commodities like wheat, rice, maize,
potatoes, and cassava. This largely positive nutritional trend
is expected to continue strongly for many years. It will,
on the whole, improve our health status as a species. But
beyond that, increased consumption of these higher value products
is resculpting our agricultural landscape and will indelibly
alter economic relations among continents, countries, and
communities. The crucial task for CIAT is to help the rural
poor actively exploit these changes in economically and environmentally
sustainable ways rather than become passive bystanders or,
worse, victims of the entrepreneurial success of others.
A diverse human diet is just the tip of the iceberg. It is
one of the more obvious signs of the much broader dynamic
we loosely refer to as globalization—changes in international
trade, corporate structure, commodity prices, methods of buying
and selling, and information and communication technologies.
In this new reality, the world’s food consumers, their
voices ventriloquized for better or worse by supermarket chains,
now call the shots. For their part producers must listen carefully
to consumers’ requirements for product variety as well
as quality and safety.
In the next few pages, we look at recent trends in global
food production, marketing, and consumption, and what they
mean for tropical farmers, scientists, and their development
partners. We also review recent research by CIAT to help farmers
make the difficult but necessary transition to producing higher
value products and linking to existing or newly emerging domestic
and export markets for those products. As we will see, this
research is fully consistent with CGIAR priorities and with
CIAT’s pursuit of the three global research-for-development
challenges that guide its work: Agrobiodiversity, Agroecosystem
Management, and Rural Innovation.
More trade but declining commodity prices
From 1980 to 2003, world trade in food, expressed as the
value of exports, more than doubled. And the annual value
of world trade in agricultural products is now approaching
US$600 billion. The industrialized world exports slightly
more than the developing countries combined, but it imports
substantially more. For tropical producers it is a huge and
potentially lucrative market. But with the last vestiges of
pure subsistence farming now vanishing, developing country
markets too are on the rise and present substantial opportunities
for raising farmers’ incomes.
What’s of special significance here is the product
balance. Bulk commodities like grains and oilseeds have dwindled
in economic importance, now making up only one-sixth of global
trade in agricultural products. Their place has been taken
by a range of processed and high-value food items, which now
account for more than 80 percent of trade. For example, exports
of fruits and vegetables rose
330 percent during the post-1980 period; in Latin America,
they shot up 400 percent, with Central America becoming a
major supplier. World meat exports also rose dramatically,
by some 250 percent, with the increase reaching 300 percent
in Latin America.
The growth of trade has been accompanied by rising pressure
on prices. World prices for wheat, maize, and rice, adjusted
for inflation, are the lowest they have been over the past
century. And prices for commodity pulses (dried legumes) are
about half what they were in 1989–90. Producers of traditional
cash crops, such as coffee and tea, have also faced severe
price declines. In all these cases, the reasons are a mix
of increased supply and sluggish demand, leading to market
saturation.
“Prices of the top 20 or so commodities are at historic
lows,” says Shaun Ferris, manager of CIAT’s agroenterprise
development project. “If we continue to focus just on
the productivity of those commodities, we lock rural people
into poverty. We’re arguing for much greater investment
in helping farmers diversify into different sectors, so they
have a range of options in supplying high-value products.”
Globalization has increased both the supply of and demand
for food, and altered the product mix. In particular, it has
simultaneously created both threats to traditional field-crop
production in tropical countries, due to stiff competition
from efficiently produced cheap foreign imports, and an array
of new opportunities due to consumer hunger—in the good
sense—for variety and quality. Globalization, then,
supports market supply from new sources. Among the commercial
trends that can link tropical farmers to new markets, we note
the rise of trade houses, supermarkets, and niche markets
(for specialty coffees, for example), as well as the Fair
Trade movement and the growing popularity of organic produce.
A stated research priority
Anyone who listens to agricultural scientists talk about
shifting tropical research to high-value crops and other products
is bound to hear the word diversification. It is closely linked
to the economics of survival in the rural tropics. The connection
is spelled out in research priorities for the period 2005-2015,
set out by the CGIAR’s Science Council (see box).
A framework for realistic action
A group of about 40 experts in diverse aspects of high-value
agriculture gathered recently at CIAT headquarters to
examine how the poor, especially neglected groups such
as rural women, can benefit from growing markets for
these products. Convened by the Global Forum on Agricultural
Research (GFAR) and the CGIAR Science Council, the workshop
was organized by the secretariats of these groups in
collaboration with CIAT, the World Vegetable Center
(AVRDC), International Plant Genetic Resources Institute
(IPGRI), and International Federation of Agricultural
Producers (IFAP).
The meeting was an important first joint initiative
following the Science Council’s recent decision
to prioritize agricultural diversification and high-value
products, such as fruits, flowers, vegetables, and livestock
products. The experts were quick to acknowledge that,
while small farmers enjoy some advantages, such as the
limited economies of scale in markets for high-value
products, they also face significant challenges, including
the need to organize, acquire new knowledge and skills,
and gain access to business support services.
Workshop participants made a good start toward doing
a better job of helping farmers meet those challenges.
Specifically, they reached a shared understanding of
what high-value products are, reviewed strategies used
in different regions for linking smallholders to markets,
identified high-priority issues for a shared research
agenda, and began creating informal networks and alliances
for addressing key themes. The CGIAR and key partners
now have the makings of a solid framework for realistic
action.
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The five CG priorities were selected to contribute directly
or indirectly to seven of the eight UN millennium development
goals. The Science Council proposes that within 3 years 80
percent of the CGIAR budget be devoted to the five priorities,
one of which is “reducing rural poverty through agricultural
diversification and emerging opportunities for high-value
commodities and products.” The Council sees the added
income for farm families coming from several sources: fruits,
vegetables, livestock, fish, and nontimber forest products.
Pursuing this priority is expected to contribute directly
to the first two millennium goals: curtailing extreme poverty
and hunger, and reducing gender disparity. The CGIAR also
sees diversification as contributing indirectly to the goals
of lowered child mortality, better maternal health, and environmental
sustainability.
The priorities document calls for the CGIAR’s research
on fruit and vegetables, currently at a low level, to be expanded
significantly. CIAT’s project on tropical fruits, launched
3 years ago, as well as its longer-standing focus on value
added and marketing, through its agroenterprise project, are
already in step with this thinking.
Diversification in coffee zones
One obvious entry point for research on high-value products
is the coffee supply chain. Coffee has suffered a slow decline
as a cash crop in recent decades. International prices fell
on average a little more than 5 percent a year from 1977 to
2001. The trend jeopardizes the livelihoods of some 25 million
growers in about 70 countries, particularly poor hillside
farm families working small plots of environmentally vulnerable
land.
Under a 3-year project, CIAT is designing a three-part research
strategy to help coffee and other smallholder farmers find
viable higher value crop replacements that match demand from
markets. In some cases, the recommended diversification will
include continued coffee production but aimed at specialty
markets that appreciate specific quality traits and are willing
to pay a premium for them. In addition to specialty coffee,
the project is working on tropical fruits, medicinal plants,
high-value fodder crops, and specialty honeys, with the aim
of developing concepts and methods to facilitate the participation
of small farmers in high-value product supply chains.
At the heart of the diversification strategy is a triad of
activities: market analysis, use of geographic information,
and crop management tailored to match products from particular
environmental niches with specific markets. Together, these
activities can help bridge the gap between what farmers might
successfully grow, given local climate and soils, and what
buyers want—a gap that has plagued earlier crop diversification
schemes.
Tropical fruits are another promising option for smallholders
(see box). Their cultivation is generally well suited to the
intensive management that can be readily provided at a small
scale—such as coffee farms, 70 percent of which are
less than 5 hectares. And since many fruits are perennials,
they fit well into coffee production systems from an environmental
standpoint: They ensure continuous groundcover, protecting
slopes from erosion.
“To fully benefit from growing and selling such higher
value crops, you need more specialized knowledge, such as
production requirements and market intelligence,” says
Thomas Oberthür, a GIS specialist with CIAT’s land
use project. This is important not only for the smooth operation
of production and distribution, but also for ensuring an equitable
distribution of benefits along the supply chain. The slice
of the pie that goes to the tropical farmer is small and shrinking.
An analysis of the distribution of benefits from African coffee
production, for example, showed that the farmer got only US$0.12
of the $26 for which one kilogram of coffee retailed in London
in 2002.
The CIAT strategy, which combines expertise from several
disciplines and four on-going research projects, recognizes
that agroecological conditions vary widely in the highlands,
between farms and even between fields within the same farm.
So, not all farmers in an area may be able to grow the same
crop and a single smallholder may need to diversify into other
products. In these environments, regional one-size-fits-all
strategies won’t work, says Oberthür, and fragmentation
of supply is a risk. Successful diversification, then, requires
farmers to cooperate among themselves, as well as with service
providers and other actors, to build a viable market chain.
They must know their clientele and their tastes, the technical
requirements of the supply chain, such as product quality,
volume, and timing of delivery, and the specific characteristics
of the higher value crop they are selling.
As a Colombian exporter told Oberthür: “We’ve
got to learn more about our product at both ends. These producers
want to know where their product is going.”
Fulfilling
the promise of tropical fruits
Since its establishment several years ago, CIAT’s
tropical fruits project has channeled its efforts mainly
in two directions. First, it is creating information
tools that help partners decide what species can best
be grown where. And second, it is developing methodologies
and technologies that can be applied with numerous fruit
species to accomplish key tasks or solve major problems.
One of the main obstacles to expanding and improving
production of some high-potential tropical fruits, such
as lulo (Solanum quitoense) and soursop (Annona
muricata L.; guanábana in Spanish)
is the difficulty farmers face in obtaining high-quality
planting materials for clonal propagation.
To support our partners’ search for solutions
to this problem, we are developing, to cite just one
example, participatory methodologies that enable lulo
growers to select elite clones as well as tissue culture
methodologies for rapid in vitro multiplication of these
elite materials on a large scale. “In vitro propagation
can provide farmers with a source of healthy plant material.
Some of them have reported increased productivity with
these materials,” comments geneticist Zaida Lentini,
who coordinates this work.
A second major challenge for small farmers is how to
manage major diseases and pests attacking diverse fruit
species. “A serious attack, by reducing both the
quantity and quality of fruit, can quickly wipe out
producers’ investment,” notes Alonso González,
manager of CIAT’s tropical fruits project. For
that reason the project will put increased effort into
integrated management of diseases and pests like fruit
flies, he explains.
Another promising but challenging line of research
is aimed at developing practical means for genetic control
of flowering in mango as a model for other tropical
fruit species. If farmers were to gain the ability to
control flowering in fruits, they could better target
their produce to markets with narrow windows of opportunity.
Recent ground-breaking research on this theme, funded
by the Rockefeller Foundation, focuses on achieving
in vitro regeneration of plantlets, using tissue culture
techniques. This is required for developing an efficient
protocol for genetic transformation, which would make
it possible to splice in genes for flowering control
and other valuable traits.
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Higher value through commodity rejuvenation
The drive to raise rural incomes may take the form of direct
diversification into new, higher value crops, or even off-farm
activities, related or not to agriculture. But changes in
the production, grading, processing, and marketing of the
crops farmers already grow may also open economic doors. A
traditional food staple like cassava, for example, can also
be grown as a source of industrial starch or processed into
chips for animal feed. Both types of alternative product,
typically involving a switch to new cassava varieties, will
provide higher and more stable incomes than if the roots are
merely sold fresh in local markets.
CIAT has worked for many years with numerous farmer groups
on such nontraditional uses of cassava and has increasingly
incorporated industrial requirements into its cassava breeding
strategy. Its collaboration with the Latin American and Caribbean
Consortium to Support Cassava Research and Development (CLAYUCA),
headquartered in the Agronatura Science Park on CIAT’s
campus, has helped stimulate and maintain a creative dialog
between the R and the D in the consortium’s name.
Following major yield improvements in recent years, Hernán
Ceballos, manager of CIAT’s cassava project, says that
the crop can now compete with other sources of starch at commercial
levels. This has fueled scientific and commercial interest
in complementary qualitative improvements. “We are interacting
closely with the industry to find out exactly what it is they
want.”
One opportunity is protein enhancement for improved nutrition
of both people and livestock. While the leaves of cassava
are rich in protein, the bulk of the edible portion of the
plant, the roots, is not. Root protein is generally only 2
to 3 percent. But Ceballos notes that promising exceptions
to the rule have recently been observed in some Central American
cultivars, which have protein levels as high as 8 percent
and more than twice the normal levels of pro-vitamin A carotenoids.
Improving the quality of cassava starch will also add value
to a field crop produced mainly by poor people. Starch consists
of two compounds, amylose and amylopectin, the latter being
the more abundant and also responsible for the texture of
“waxy” starch, which fetches a high price. One
CIAT strategy, then, is to select for lower amylose content.
In decades past CIAT cassava researchers analyzed only about
300 cassava samples a year for starch quality. In 2005 the
Center began to beef up its analytical capacity. Throughput
is expected to reach 300 samples a week during 2005.
Perhaps the most novel aspect of CIAT’s new cassava
breeding strategy is the introduction of mutagenesis to induce
new value-adding traits. “Inbreeding allows you to push
for the appearance of recessive genes, most of which will
be bad for the plant but which can be easily bred out,”
says Ceballos. The key is to increase the chances that useful
recessive genes—such as ones coding for quality starch
traits— will express themselves. With support from CIAT,
national research programs in India, Thailand, Vietnam, Uganda,
Ghana, Cuba, and Brazil began projects in 2004 to incorporate
inbreeding into their cassava research.
The message is clear. Even with a traditional food staple
like cassava, there is excellent potential to add value, thus
rejuvenating the commodity.
Better buffaloes from improved forages
CIAT’s work with smallholders in Southeast Asia to
improve the supply of forages is also a good example of the
economic power of quality improvement. The forage technologies,
developed with support from the Australian Agency for International
Development (AusAID) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB),
help farmers raise healthier animals, with less investment
of time and energy (especially in collecting fodder and herding
animals). When farmers adopt such technologies, says Rod Lefroy,
CIAT’s regional coordinator for Asia, “they cease
being livestock keepers and become livestock producers.”
It is a change in both outlook and behavior. Instead of keeping
animals mainly as an insurance policy, to be sold for cash
to cope with emergencies like crop failure or family funeral
expenses, the farmers begin to see their animals as a source
of income, of products they can market on a regular basis.
Lefroy cites the case of Hmong highland farmers in Laos and
their draft animals. After buying a single buffalo at the
beginning of the cropping season, a farmer would typically
see the animal’s physical condition slowly deteriorate
due to inadequate nutrition. But now, with good-quality forages
available, the buffalo can be properly fed with less investment
of family time and labor. As animals are in better health
and show significant weight gain instead of loss, some farmers
are buying and selling more than one animal per year, providing
a welcome boost to their income. Traders coming to the village,
explains Lefroy, are willing to pay more per kilo of live
buffalo thanks to simpler marketing (i.e., buying more animals
in one visit) and better quality animals. “This amounts
to improvements in livestock production and the overall livestock
marketing chain.”
Potato farmers enter the fast-food lane
Good planning and organization by farmers is another means
of boosting the de facto value of agricultural products, whether
traditional commodities or new high-value niche crops. For
example, pooling research, technology, production, equipment,
transport, and support services, as well as working out clear
delivery timetables with customers, yield economies of scale
and other efficiencies that put money directly into producers’
pockets. The same is true of business development strategies,
such as formal contract farming and the use of information
services. CIAT is actively investigating various organizational
options, notably through its projects on participatory research
and agroenterprise development.
An enterprise in Uganda demonstrates how good planning and
organization can help bring farmers financial success with
a traditional product. In the country’s hilly southwest,
the Nyabyumba Farmers’ Group, originally set up in 1998
as a spinoff from a Farmer Field School, now supplies high-quality,
pregraded chipping potatoes to a fast-food restaurant in Kampala,
part of the Nandos chain.
CIAT trained staff of the NGO Africare in market facilitation
methods; Africare in turn helped the farmers plan and set
up their business. The group set out strict planting schedules
for members to synchronize their production with the client’s
needs. The group also changed their planting density to obtain
the required size of potato for this market. These and other
technical innovations were designed with the help of Uganda’s
National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO).
With Africare’s help the group also sorted out conditions
of sale with Nandos. These related to price, terms of payment,
potato variety, timing of delivery, volume, and quality. Deliveries
of 190 tons per month as of May 2005 have earned the group
the equivalent of US$33,000.
Several lessons from this experience stand out. First, while
a market orientation does enable smallholder farmers to plug
into higher value markets, the process requires long-term
support from research and development partners. Second, access
to innovations at critical points, such as production, postharvest
handling, and marketing, are vital to success. Third, participatory
methods allow market chain participants and service providers
to better understand each other’s needs and challenges.
Finally, by consolidating relationships with buyers and opening
communication channels with all market chain participants,
farmers gain confidence and improve their negotiating power.
The high road to high value: Hurdles and rewards
Diversification into novel high-value crops, or at least
ones the farmer has never grown before, may be the boldest
strategy for raising farm revenues. But it is also a strategy
prone to great uncertainty. While traditional commodity production
also carries with it certain risks, like a poor harvest due
to a pest outbreak, experienced farmers can anticipate the
threat and make plans to cope with it. It is the devil they
know. With crops that are new to them, the uncertainty, even
about the production risks involved, is high. And on top of
these are the risks associated with marketing.
On the supply side, information and knowledge bases may be
weak (see box), and relevant technical expertise and business
services scarce. Farmers may also lack sufficient investment
capital and inputs, and face technical constraints such as
inappropriate germplasm. Other obstacles have to do with a
“demanding” demand side—buyers who impose
increasingly stringent quality, safety, and traceability requirements,
especially in industrial countries. As CIAT’s director
of research, Douglas Pachico, notes, “We’re seeing
that market entry issues are often more important than production
problems.”
Agroenterprise service providers may need to alter objectives
and retool. With a history of largely unsuccessful supply-driven
agricultural development haunting them, their learning curve
can be as steep as the farmers’. A pitfall any new support
strategies must avoid is loss of service to the poorest. Since
high-value crops generally require more technology, knowledge,
organization, communication, and cash investment than standard
food staples, there is a risk that those who lack such resources
will be left on the sidelines. Furthermore, R&D organizations
must not become too enamored of their favorite product list,
since today’s high-value crop may be tomorrow’s
loss maker.
So the road to high-value cropping is strewn with many obstacles.
But the rewards are enticing.
Cyberspace
and the rural marketplace
Development partners, farmer groups, and other actors
in chains for high-value products are keenly aware of
the need for stronger links with multiple sources of
market-related information. Exciting opportunities to
strengthen information services are being created by
the gradual spread of Internet access and other new
information and communications technologies (ICTs) in
developing countries.
In order for rural communities and organizations to
reap the potential benefits of ICT use, further interventions
are required beyond the initial investment in connectivity
and training. One of these involves the creation of
local content that responds to rural people’s
needs. During recent years CIAT has gained valuable
experience in determining how to promote the generation
of market-related content at the regional, national,
and local levels.
A notable example is CIAT’s relationship with
the African software developer Busylab, with whom we
have developed market information systems for Africa
(www.tradenet.biz) and Central America (www.agroemprendedor.org).
Through complementary research in Colombia and Bolivia,
the Center has also developed an approach for creating
local information systems for rural agroenterprise development,
or SIDERs (their acronym in Spanish). These systems
are constructed in a participatory manner with community-based
stakeholder groups, representing farmer associations,
other chain actors, and local organizations. Trained
to act as “information and communications promoters,”
the groups develop and disseminate market-related content,
using Web sites (see, for example, www.caucasider.org)
and diverse conventional media, such as radio, printed
bulletins, and local drama.
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What to grow? Ask Homologue
The first question asked by farmers wanting to diversify
into higher value crops is, “What can we grow profitably
in our fields?” Choosing an appropriate high-value product
is critical, but the decision may not come easily, especially
if the producer has been growing the same mix of crops for
many years and has little marketing experience. The first
step is to find out which new high-value crops will thrive
in the farmer’s agroecological zone. In highland areas,
where soil and climate conditions vary widely over short distances,
what’s suitable for one farmer may be inappropriate
for another.
CIAT has designed a computer tool called Homologue that can
provide part of the answer. Homologue is a Windows application
that uses climate and soil information about one or more locations
to identify other places with similar characteristics. An
agroenterprise service provider could use Homologue to answer
these questions: “Where on earth are there farms like
ours? What high-value crops are being grown there that we
too could try out?” Similarly, researchers or development
agencies looking to put improved crop varieties into farmers’
hands can use Homologue as a targeting tool.
The result of collaboration between CIAT’s tropical
fruits and land use projects, Homologue is a self-contained,
user-friendly mapping system. The user simply points the cursor
to a target site on the screen to generate a display of homologous
locations elsewhere on the continental or world map. Future
releases will have high enough resolution to allow a specific
farm field to be selected as the input point.
CIAT is also helping to reinforce the global knowledge base
on high-value crops through various information services,
including the recently launched New World Fruits Database.
This is a joint effort with the International Plant Genetic
Resources Institute (IPGRI). The database, which allows for
Web-enabled searches, holds information on more than 1,200
fruit species from the Americas. In addition to pictures,
this resource covers taxonomy, common names, uses of the species,
and geographic distribution. It also provides bibliographic
references for further research and links to information on
the availability of germplasm. Work was under way in 2005
to allow the database to be used in tandem with Homologue
and other geographic information systems (GIS) tools.
Learning alliances for agroenterprise
development
While good crop information tools are essential to high-value
production, farmers need direct assistance with many other
aspects of agroenterprise development as well, especially
organizational and economic aspects. Through “learning
alliances” with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), CARE
International, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, and
other major international development agencies, CIAT and its
partners are developing and testing a comprehensive participatory
approach to helping farmers design, set up, and manage small
agroenterprises.
As the approach is refined through action research conducted
across different locations and products, it is being widely
implemented through development projects. In Central America,
for example, CIAT’s international partners work with
more than 30 local organizations in four countries, who, in
turn, support enterprise development for more than 125,000
rural families. The learning alliance thus provides a strong
leverage point for achieving impact on a large scale.
The alliances have already allowed CIAT to help thousands
of rural entrepreneurs in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast
Asia. Shaun Ferris, manager of CIAT’s agroenterprise
development project, comments that the alliances are “an
incredibly useful way to build capacity around the relatively
complicated task of enterprise development.”
In addition to building the capacity of local business service
providers, the learning alliances provide a platform for demand-driven
action research carried out by CIAT and its partners. Through
such research we can help development practitioners, the private
sector, and policy makers design or adapt new approaches and
tools that support enterprise development. Moreover, this
work enables CIAT scientists to draw on a wealth of field
cases for strategic research resulting in international public
goods that help create new options for small farmers in high-value
agriculture.
In Southeast Asia, with support from the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation (SDC), CIAT and local partners
are helping farmer groups in six districts of Vietnam to diversify
into higher value products using its four-step agroenterprise
development process. A major success to date has been a significant
increase in peanut production. This was achieved through a
technique known as market chain analysis, which brings all
players in the chain together in a participatory approach
to problem solving. Mark Lundy is an agroenterprise specialist
and the main architect of CIAT’s learning alliances.
He notes that in Central America, where the learning alliance
is supported by Canada’s International Development Research
Centre (IDRC), there is strong consumer interest in high-value
products, including organically grown produce.
Many poor farmers in Central America live in environmentally
sensitive highland areas, where they try to make a living
from tiny holdings, often just a hectare or two. Together,
the farmers and service organizations with which CIAT has
worked decided that, with so little land available, intensive
vegetable production would be a good bet. But the big urban
supermarket buyers are very demanding about quality and also
about the use of ecologically sound production practices.
So the farmers, says Lundy, have to consider many factors
as they switch into or enhance vegetable production. Besides
economic feasibility, they have to decide on the types of
inputs they will use and how they are going to manage their
natural resources sustainably.
There’s also the issue of product volume. Fortunately,
scaling up to provide a sufficient quantity of quality products
creates postproduction jobs—sorting, grading, washing,
and packing—which tend to benefit women. “It’s
a simple kind of value adding, but it’s occurring at
or near the farm level,” says Lundy. He cites the example
of a project in El Salvador, where farmers produce high-quality
vegetables for a city supermarket with backing from CRS. “This
project has generated livelihoods, not just for smallholders,
but also for family members who help prepare the vegetables
for delivery.”
The high-value horn of plenty
That and the other experiences and achievements described
in this report reflect a conviction that CIAT shares with
growing numbers of scientists, development practitioners,
and rural people: The journey toward sustainable livelihoods
depends, not just on the staple foods that sustain life, but
also on a cornucopia (the “horn of plenty” from
Greek mythology) of higher value products that could improve
life’s quality.
Based on its work and accomplishments so far, what has CIAT
learned about tapping the potential of such products for reducing
rural poverty? One clear lesson is that, while building on
our traditional strengths in crop improvement, we must learn
to exercise those strengths differently.
In research on cassava and tropical forages, for example,
this means developing new traits or promoting uses of crops
that better enable farmers to seize emerging market opportunities.
Another challenge is to derive generic tools and approaches
(sometimes from work that originally centered on staple foods),
which our development partners can adapt and apply to a wide
range of tropical products. For example, the robust participatory
methods devised by CIAT’s agroenterprise project build
on our experience in developing new markets for cassava.
To guarantee that such methods are widely implemented and
can achieve large-scale impact, we must also create more effective
models of collaboration, such as CLAYUCA and the learning
alliances described above, which involve traditional and nontraditional
partners. Precisely because the high-value horn of plenty
offers so many possibilities, it will take an unprecedented
collaborative effort to identify and develop options that
can deliver on the promise of high-value products.
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