Browse by Theme: Value Chains

Evidence from the Bangladesh dairy sector demonstrates that strategically sourcing from and selling to low-income farmers helped businesses sustain reliable supply chains, enhance market opportunity, and ultimately increase profits.

Reducing poverty and promoting women empowerment through market development in the southern Andean highlands of Peru

First grown by the British, in Sri Lanka in the 1800’s, tea remains one of the country’s primary export earners and employers. World renowned, ‘Ceylon Tea’
accounts for the third of the tea produced globally while it remains one of the largest exporters of tea in the world. Nationally tea is one of the primary export earners, while the industry employs 10% of the country’s labour force, mostly consisting of women. Despite its pivotal role in the country’s economy for two centuries, those who live and work on the tea plantations are some of the poorest and most marginalized in the country. This brief looks at how multi-faceted worker engagement can improve the development of the tea sector.

Three years after the 2007/2008 food price crisis, the cost of food items on both international and national markets are on the rise again.

Poor people, still suffering from the impact of the previous crisis, are being hit hardest. As well as the challenge of rising prices, agricultural commodity indices on both international and national markets have been increasingly volatile over the short-term – negatively impacting on both producers and consumers.

Assessments show that prices on international markets are likely to remain high for the foreseeable future.

This case study explores how CARE Kenya combined food security programming with an emerging market engagement strategy to decrease food shortages and increase incomes in western Kenya. With support from USAID, CARE implemented the Dak Achana project from 2004 to 2009. Over this period, the multi-component initiative succeeded in reducing the incidence of food shortages among the target area households from 86 percent in 2006 to 65 percent in 2008. The project has benefitted well over 100,000 Kenyans. These results are not insignificant in a region where 60 percent of the population lives in poverty and 90 percent of households depend on subsistence agriculture for their staple foods.

With support from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), CARE Zambia is using a market-based approach to develop a sustainable network of 500 rural agro dealers, which will provide 91,000 smallholder farmers with access to a range of high-quality, affordable agricultural inputs and improved technologies. This innovation brief highlights one unique strategy CARE has used to enable agrodealers to go the last kilomenter in input supply in Zambia – the introduction of pedaling power.

CARE's programme on the tea sector of Sri Lanka demonstrates how improving worker's lives makes sense for businesses.