CHALLENGE
In 2009, Practical Action Nepal used Participatory Market Mapping to design a DFID-funded project called Dairy Market Access for Smallholder Farmers (Dairy MASF). The aim was to improve the dairy markets in the districts of Chitwan, Tanahu, Dhading and Gorkha to enable at least 10,000 poor farmers to commercialize household milk production and pull themselves out of poverty. The team designed the project with the market actors using Participatory Market Mapping Workshops (PMMWs). After the project was designed, in October 2010 the team used four more PMMWs to build momentum for collaborative action.
APPROACH
Practical Action used Participatory Market Mapping Workshops (PMMWs) to help marginalized dairy farmers in Nepal gain access to more functional markets, increase their incomes and contribute to a more favourable business environment. Working with the system actors as a facilitator PA and the local facilitator built a shared understanding of the market and increased levels of trust and influence.
Using a visual representation of the market system – the Market Map – facilitators in the field used PMMWs to bring public and private market actors together to identify and discuss blockages and opportunities for increased coordination and collaboration. Practical Action's approach is based: systemic thinking, participation, and facilitation.
Practical Action 2009 - Three fundamental guiding principles of Participatory Market System Development
The Nepal team carried out this PSA process in three phases:
By mapping the market for dairy in four districts of Nepal – Chitwan, Gorkha, Tanaha and Dhading – Practical Action, together with farmers themselves, cooperatives, businesses and the government, identified basic health of cattle as one of the big problems in the sector. Nutritional deficiencies in cattle meant that poor farmers had not been able to produce high quality milk in large enough quantities to attract the interest of cooperatives and companies to buy their milk. This limited the growth of the industry nation-wide.
KEY INSIGHTS
RESULTS
In its mid-term evaluation, the Dairy MASF reported that 93% of responding households stated they had experienced an increase in annual income since commencement of the project. This increase was on average US$366, equivalent to a 38% increase in income. In Tanahu, where the poverty of the target populations was particularly acute, average annual income grew by more than 110%. The causes of these increases were consistently attributed by the respondents to the Dairy MASF project conceived through the PMMW process.
Practical Action facilitated market actors across the system to interact, find and test out possible collaborative solutions to make the market system more efficient and work better for smallholder farmers. As a result of strengthening relationships between market actors, a number of partnerships were formed to pilot innovations targeting the different bottlenecks across the system: cattle loans, dairy chapters in district chambers of commerce and industry, Nepal’s first low cost, high nutrient cattle feed, and a business plans for investment of large-scale processors in animal health camps.
Since 2010 efforts have also focused on facilitating media markets to communicate successful pilots to a wider audience, in order to turn isolated achievements into deep transformations across the system
Facilitating the dairy market system in Nepal: A participatory approach. Available from:
http://www.developmentbookshelf.com/doi/abs/10.3362/2046-1887.2011.015