ABSTRACT
The growth over the last several years of food procurement through institutional demand markets in the developing world represents a significant opportunity for women in agriculture. Institutional demand (ID) refers to public, demand-side market interventions in which markets are established and facilitated by a public or not-for-profit institution – a host-country government, multilateral agency, or non-governmental organization (NGO). Programs that include ID purchasing often promote social welfare objectives that provide preferential procurement terms for the smallholder farmer, 1 such as a guaranteed price at harvest, seeking to address the problem that even with support on inputs and improved techniques, small-scale farmers might not invest the additional resources if they are not certain to sell the surplus. In this way, institutional purchases of food commodities from local farmers by public or not-for-profit sector entities present opportunities to improve access to market outlets for smallholder farmers and even more particularly for female smallholders. An increase in targeted demand from an institutional buyer, however, may not stimulate a supply-side response if resource-constrained smallholders do not have access to improved inputs or the know-how to increase production to meet the demand. As a result, for ID procurement to succeed in sourcing from smallholders, supply-side interventions in agricultural production and marketing are often typically also required.
