Policy Issue:
Despite its outsized role in employment, the agriculture sector remains unproductive. The World Bank is conducting research on whether linkages between producers and buyers, technical assistance, and matching grant can improve profits and productivities of farmers and agribusiness SMEs.
In the first portion of the research, the research team will target productive alliances, which is composed of multiple farmers and a buyer. The productive alliance as a unit will be given assistance to improve their trading relationship. In the second portion, agribusiness SMEs will be connected with buyers through Market Connect, which is a royalty bearing brokerage and technical assistance service for growth oriented agri-business MSMEs.