Overview
This project aimed to enhance the sustainable livelihoods of small farmers in rural vegetable communities in Punjab and Sindh in Pakistan by utilising a combination of value chain theory, participatory approaches, and whole-family approaches.
By providing participatory training to farmers on walking the chain activities, conducting consignments, setting up intervention trials, and adopting value chain interventions, the project has incentivized farmers to shift their attitudes and behaviours from being primarily production-led to being more market-oriented.
Farmers have become more attentive to improving the quality of their crops to meet market demands, resulting in better prices for their produce and decreased waste. The project has also achieved greater engagement with women and youth through a whole-family approach that sensitized men to support women and youth to participate in value chain activities.
A major outcome of this project was the development of a Value Chain Approach/Whole Family Extension Approach/Participatory Action Research model that was used to identify value chain constraints and develop interventions to increase product quality and production efficiency resulting in a significant increase in household income and crop gross margins per acre. The strength of this model is sustainable of the demonstration value chains due to its treatment of the whole value chain as a system and creating a win-win situation for all chain members.
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Appendices
The appendices for this report are available upon request via the ACIAR Library.
