Agri-Business, Enterprise Development and Market Linkage Course

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Introduction

For rural development and poverty alleviation, marketing of agricultural produce by smallholder farmers is key. Markets provide the means through which the rural poor participate in economic activities as producers, as employees and as consumers of goods and services.

Smallholder farmers’ production is not linked to the market. Linking smallholder farmers to existing and new income-generating agro-processing enterprises is necessary for rural development and poverty alleviation. This training programme aims at building the agro-enterprise capacity of rural development practitioners to enable them facilitate the market integration of the most vulnerable beneficiaries. The participants will be guided through participatory processes for identifying market opportunities and developing viable agro-enterprises that are sustainable and which are geared towards improving the incomes of rural farmers, processors, and traders.

Agribusiness and Enterprise development is a course oriented towards imparting knowledge about different activities, economic concepts and tools related understanding agriculture as a business. The course modules: Economics of Production, Agriculture as a business, Micro-enterprise Development and Management, Financial planning, Principles of Business Management and Marketing, Entrepreneurship Development and Networking.

Course Objective:

•         Help farmers engage with markets.

•         Apply skills in participatory methods for farmers in Market analysis and decision making.

•         Guide in market identification and selection of attractive enterprise options, based on information gathered from the market and market chain.

•         Build agro-enterprise skills within the community so that groups can continue to effectively engage with the marketplace in the future.

•         Agriculture as a business

•         Economic approaches and business strategies in agribusiness and enterprise development

•         Understand the nature, importance, and role of agribusiness firms in the domestic and the international markets in which farmers compete

•         Economic principles related to agriculture and agribusiness

•         Developing agribusiness plans

Duration

5 days

Who should attend?

National governments, UN partners and NGOs, Agriculture Extension (Agricultural extension officers, senior agricultural officials and policy makers) working with communities, in governments, funding agencies, Research organizations

Course content

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