Markets that Serve the Poor

Markets can have a powerful positive impact on the lives of the rural poor. IDE has observed that the most successful smallholders--those who have lifted themselves out of abject poverty--are those who participate more fully in markets by purchasing more inputs, making effective use of technical knowledge and market information, and developing stable linkages to output markets.

In our programs worldwide, IDE helps create market conditions that enable the rural poor to become successful market participants. Concepts and practices usually associated with private business are applied to the problem of poverty as IDE works to:

1. Identify market opportunities that can be exploited by poor people
2. Develop technologies that the poor can use to generate income
3. Establish supply chains to deliver technologies to the poor at affordable prices
4. Conduct promotional campaigns to convince smallholders to invest in income-generating technologies
5. Establish linkages with output markets
6. Ensure that everyone in the market network, especially the smallholder, receives a fair profit

Water as an Entry Point

In order to participate effectively in markets, smallholders must overcome certain constraints, including access to water, appropriate technologies, agricultural inputs, credit, and information.

By assisting smallholders to overcome these barriers, IDE helps integrate them into agricultural markets--both as consumers of products and services and as producers of saleable crops--with the end result being increased incomes and improved livelihoods.

Scarce water resources and/or a lack of control over water resources are pervasive constraints facing a large majority of smallholders. Water is critical to a smallholder's ability to generate income and escape cycles of sickness and poverty:

• Irrigation water provides a basis for increased agricultural production and market participation.
  
• Clean drinking water is directly related to the health and productivity of smallholder family members.

For these reasons, water is an effective and strategic entry point for addressing rural poverty. Simple, low-cost, household-level irrigation technologies become the starting point for improving agricultural production and increasing market participation.

Affordable technologies like accessible hand pumps, water filters, and health information improve family well-being and reduce medical costs.

Pro-Poor Technologies

A continuous process of research and innovation is a key element of IDE's strategy. The constraints to agricultural production and livelihood improvement that smallholders face often require specialized technological solutions that do not yet exist in the marketplace. IDE has expertise in identifying and developing pro-poor technologies to fill these gaps and disseminating them through market channels.

IDE works with smallholders to identify and develop appropriate technologies that increase productivity, generate cash income, and/or improve quality of life for the rural poor.

IDE trains and equips local small-scale enterprises to manufacture, distribute, install, and service the technologies at a fair market price.

Every entrepreneur knows that a great idea does not guarantee success--it must be sold. Similarly, appropriate, pro-poor technologies will have only limited impact unless they are effectively marketed.

IDE actively promotes appropriate technologies to the rural poor through a variety of methods including:

1. Printed promotional materials such as billboards, posters, pamphlets, calendars, etc.
2. Media such as newspapers, radio, television, outdoor video presentations, and live theatre
3. Feature films, produced with local actors
4. Live product demonstrations in marketplaces and agricultural fairs.
5. Demonstration plots, community meetings, and farmer field-days

Similar mass-marketing techniques have been used by IDE to raise awareness on public health issues such as arsenic contamination in Bangladesh and trachoma prevention in Vietnam.