Small Scale, but Potential Big Payoffs

Less-developed countries need many things – but, in most cases, nothing greater or more urgent than productive agriculture. Most of the world’s poorest people -- the 2.6 billion who try to survive on less than $2 a day – are family farmers whose small plots are unproductive and generally cut off from growing export markets. If these families could make the leap from subsistence to market-driven farming, world poverty would decline exponentially. It’s a big "if."

But the 2008 Development Marketplace on Sustainable Agriculture for Development features a hundred finalists whose projects aim to do just that. The projects are all small scale – calling for grants of US$200,000 or less – but most agriculture is small scale. As the World Development Report: Agriculture for Development, which the World Bank published a year ago, said, "[Family farming] remains the most common form of organization in agriculture."

While the Report said large-scale farming, done right, can be tremendously efficient, it also says smallholders have an enormous but mostly untapped potential to free themselves from subsistence and become part of the global agricultural market.

The projects that will be on display Sept. 24-26 in the Atrium of the Main Building of the World Bank in Washington point the way. A sampling:

Affordable transport would come to agricultural and fishing communities in Senegal through a project (US$130,630) that would power boats with outboards using locally produced biofuel.

A project from Sudan (US$190,000) would replace expensive imported oil with Lulu, local produced shea nut cooking oil.

Mini-cold storage in India (US$200,000) would aid small farmers who lose a big part of their vegetable crops to spoilage.

A project from West Bank and Gaza (US$186,090) would bring micro-credit to small-scale urban and peri-urban farmers.

Small farmers in Ukraine would use ozone in crop drying to minimize crop spoilage and increase seed germination (US$200,000).

A project from Nepal (US$197,035) would introduce organic farming to struggling upland smallholders so they could produce high-value crops.

While all the projects are modest in size, they – and the others that will be exhibited – are designed to be easily replicated. That means that while the target beneficiaries may be hundreds or a few thousands, those numbers could be multiplied many times by initial successes.

That’s why 2008 Development Marketplace on Sustainable Agriculture for Development is so important in bringing a new "Green Revolution" to the poorest countries.