Marketing and extension
Improving tree product marleting for smallholders
Selling leaf meal prepared from Leucaena leucocephala, a fodder shrub in Tanga, Tanzania. Photo: S Franzel, World Agroforestry Centre
Issues of gender and equity are as important at the market access as at the production stage. Across the wide spectrum of agroforestry systems and products (ranging from high price per unit volume non-timber forest products, via smallholder timber to tree crops, fruits and vegetables), our global research project on tree product marketing aims to understand how value chains currently function and where there are possibilities for local actors to improve their livelihoods, either by capturing a larger share of product value or by increasing net benefits.
Our work aims to assess ways of expanding smallholders' access to value chains for agroforestry products and to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of value chains so as to improve smallholder livelihoods. We address problems faced by two sets of actors:
- Small-scale farmers and entrepreneurs, who face high marketing risks and costs and earn low returns
- Agencies, both private and public, trying to facilitate smallholder marketing.
Learn more about the Marketing and Extension programme:
