Socioeconomic & Political Economic Barriers

Socioeconomic & Political Economic Barriers

Households engaged in smallholder agriculture are also involved in a wide range of non-agricultural income generating activities. Many of these are related to natural resource extraction such as fishing, logging, charcoal making or non-timber forest products such as honey or medicines. Additionally, many households engage in petty trading (e.g. buying and selling dry-goods), small-scale processing of food (e.g. selling buns or roasted nuts), or low-return manufacturing (e.g. basket weaving). Others obtain income by migrating for work to urban centers or receiving remittances from employed relatives. This diversity of livelihood strategies makes it difficult to find agricultural technologies that will align with resources available to most farmers.

Developing policies for poverty alleviation by strengthening the rural economy is a complicated task and one that does not have short-term political payoffs. Investments in rural feeder roads, marketing information systems, land tenure policies and agricultural extension tend to be long- term efforts which do not as easily capture media attention (and thus raise political profiles) as compared to projects in urban areas or large scale investments (such as highways and dams). The marginalization of the rural poor is not surprising given the fact that smallholder farmers are geographically dispersed, not very well educated and relatively unorganized.

The Snapp Lab is investigating the following promising options: