Agricultural and NTFP Sectors
AGRICULTURE
Concentrate support for the development of a local territory… or take a step back and support the development of a sector and its value chains? In the “global village”, where trade is globalised and the local/global levels are interdependent, the value chain approach is relevant.
The issues
Integrated local development projects have been and often still are of interest. However, in a world where the cocoa of an Ivorian farmer can be listed on the London Stock Exchange, processed in the United States, and finally consumed in Japan, it is often relevant to understand the functioning of a sector and its value chains in order to help local producers (farmers, breeders, charcoal makers, etc.) and intermediaries to make the best of their situation. Even for products consumed locally, the analysis of a value chain is also of interest: distribution of margins and income between actors; accessibility and availability of food crops, non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and livestock products for food security, firewood and charcoal for energy supply; impacts on rural development (income, employment, land use planning) and the balance of trade, etc. The difficulty of the analysis lies in the cross-referencing of various data: technical, economic, political, regulatory, etc., at scales ranging from the village to the planet!
Our services
In order to help both local operators to make a living from their activities (agricultural production, livestock, charcoal burning, NTFP collection, etc.) and the State to ensure its food sovereignty and to fight against energy insecurity, we carry out sector and value chain analyses, according to methodologies adapted to the area, the speculation and the scale of analysis targeted. Our recommendations can be technical (improving crop itineraries, processing, etc.), economic (creating a price observatory, developing new market segments, concluding inter-professional agreements to consolidate the sector or review the distribution of margins, etc.), strategic (understanding the challenges of organic farming, fair trade, the functioning of agricultural exchanges and futures markets, the negotiations and agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), etc.) or political (reviewing the development priorities of a sector, redeploying human and budgetary resources, providing the State with regulatory or fiscal tools to encourage or coerce, etc.).
