Risk and Vulnerability Mailing List Archive

["James BISCOE" <<address removed>>]

shape of agribusiness: co-ordination problemsDirk Bezemer argues in favour of 
reviewing the actual workings of agribusiness as Vinay Chand proposed,
and made some earlier comments on the Risk and Vulnerability forum which I had 
not seen.
Excuse me if I  repeat myself. My understanding is that in commercial (as 
opposed to smallholder) agribusiness the  function which was undertaken by the 
old parastatals of providing credit in order that inputs can be supplied and 
crops produced, is done by the banking sector. They are not heavily involved in 
this in smallholder agriculture due to the lack of collateral against which 
they can lend smallholders money. This then leads to the suggestion that 
consideration be given to issuing formal tenure of one form or another to 
smallholder farmers for their land as a mechanism to facilitate the banking 
sector to become more active in the smallholder sector.
IN addition, it seems to me that the State has a function as provider of last 
resort and holder of food security buffer stocks and that in consequence there 
is a function for it to provide  a floor in the market, although care needs to 
be taken that this is not used to set the terms of trade against the 
agricultural producers. I have no doubt that this could be accomplished and, 
hopefully, is working already in various places?
Thank you
James Biscoe
19/5/04
0900hrs