User talk:Brian Kapotwe

Reflections on Market Based Livelihoods
It is now evident that well-structured Market based interventions provide effective pathways out of poverty for small holder farmers. This is done by creating business links for poor small scale producers with the larger market systems through a number of concepts including; Inclusive business, Business at the centre of the pyramid, inclusive markets and so on. The ever changing global social and economic scenario brings in new forms of vulnerability and affects the way market work. Reflecting on the Market based approach in an ever changing global environment is essential for practitioners and development workers.

In this post however, I reflect on highlighting some of the negative or unintended challenges that can be observed with market based livelihoods as a practitioner, and by way of reflections gathered through interactions with different actors in this field. Some of the challenges include the following; 1.	Market based approaches in the long term tend to undermine the indigenous adaptive capacity of the rural poor by exposing them to highly demanding and volatile Markets. Most practitioners have argued that this can perpetuate a top down model of development in which farmer’s decisions are made for them. 2.	Links to markets and market systems tend to concentrate mainly on the technical aspects without paying attention to farmer’s ‘agency’ to make informed decisions, influence systems around them and engage effectively with policy. 3.	How to address the challenge of not to target only the market ready farmers. 4.	Market approaches can bring producers into trading relationships with unequal conditions of very unequal negotiating power and very unequal information. 5.	Interventions have tended to emphasize on high value export markets at the expense of domestic markets and staple crops undermining household and regional food security. Given the above scenario, the need to continually learn from practice and regularly refine our approaches to ensure effectiveness and minimise unintended challenges is important.