Households and Markets : Households and Markets Overview

Africa / © Roberta Casaliggi

Households and Markets Overview

This section provides access to demographic and other socio-economic data being used by HarvestChoice to better characterize the linkages between poverty and agriculture. HarvestChoice is tasked with assessing the potential scale and distribution of the impacts of a range of interventions to improve cropping systems as well as the markets to which farm households might increasingly be linked. Such interventions could, for example, boost the availability, range and quality of staple foods, place downward pressure on food prices, and increase income earning opportunities in agricultural production, distribution, processing, and retailing sectors. But the extent to which such changes map into improved welfare for poor people is closely coupled to the nature and degree of engagement of (different types of) households in agriculture. We gather together and provide access to this type of information through the Households and Markets section.

We first provide access to information on the status of and trends in the distribution and severity of both poverty and hunger, according to a range of internationally comparable measures that are monitored by the global development community as part of the Millennium Development Goal process, and by countries individually – often through Poverty Reduction Strategy Programs .

Cambodia / © Robert Churchill

We then present selected information on two important base layers of information with regard to improved understanding of the context of challenges and opportunities. Firstly, information compiled about the distribution of infrastructure for later integration into our analysis of development (e.g., in the evaluation of both market access and the notion of "development domains").

Another set of macro variables, long established as a principal and complex factor in conditioning many dimensions of pressure on natural resources, demand for agricultural expansion, and opportunities for development, are related to demography, in particular levels of rural population density and of urbanization.

Given particular patterns of human settlements, road infrastructure and the distribution of rural population and agricultural production, we utilize a number of physical measures of access to markets, and subsequently use this as a factor in assessing the potential costs and benefits of investments and policies.

However, the specific ways in which the potential benefits of change might impact individual households are strongly influenced by the characteristics of households themselves and the extent to which households engage in consumption of agricultural products and livelihood strategies involving agricultural production or post-farm sectors. We deal in more detail with household level engagement in production, and the characterization of small scale production systems as part of the Production Systems section.

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