Making markets work for the poor (M4P) approach and smallholder irrigation farming

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show what M4P is, how it came into being and how it has been used to guide intervention in different context and to weigh the extent to which it can be used to guide the study and interventions aimed at enhancing the sustainability of smallholder irrigation schemes. M4P is a holistic approach to development that offers agencies the route needed to achieve systemic and sustainable change, focusing on the identification and addressing of fundamental constraints that inhibit the beneficial participation of the poor in market systems as either consumers or producers. M4P historically evolved from diverse experiences in business promotion, private sector policy development, the SL approach and the failure of economic structural adjustment programs and trade liberalization as development approaches to development and poverty eradication. This diverse background made it holistic and multi-dimensional. The M4P conceptualises market systems as consisting of core markets, supporting functions, and a set of rules. The smallholder farmers, as potential markets for different value chains are not well understood, hence the need to invest into an M4P guided holistic and multi-disciplinary research to identify the factors that prevent markets from working for the smallholder irrigation farmers in Zimbabwe.