Revitalizing Agriculture market systems

• by Justus Njeru
• Jul 28, 2020
• 1 min

The short video highlights the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and points to the need to revitalize agriculture market systems. What will be the role of governments have to develop a longer-term solution?

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed our unpreparedness to deal with food supply in the event of a global pandemic. With fragmented supply chains, weak market linkages, and high post-harvest losses characterizing agriculture supply chains in most developing countries, the pandemic has further strained the agri-market systems. On one hand, the public expenditure in the form of subsidies and agri-market stabilization funds is showing sub-optimal results on strengthening the agri-market systems, the producers, especially smallholder farmers are suffering losses due to inability to access agriculture inputs and a reliable market for their produce. While governments have responded with short-term measures to deal with the crisis, it calls for a systemic assessment coupled with policy and regulatory support to address the situation having a longer-term perspective to revitalize agriculture market systems. The short video highlights the need for market systems’ readiness assessment and how it can be implemented.