Market system approaches for delivery of innovations, and safe and affordable animal-sourced foods

Subtheme (ST) 2: Market system approaches for delivery of innovations, and safe and affordable animal-sourced foods

Specific objective

To design, evaluate and promote behavioural and institutional innovations, including business models and innovation bundling, that modify actor behaviour and enhance the efficient and inclusive delivery of technologies and services to livestock market actors while strengthening the delivery of safe and affordable animal-sourced foods to consumers.

Rationale

Market inefficiencies, including weak linkages between livestock farmers and other market actors such as input and service providers and offtakers, contribute to low uptake of innovations and best practices that are critical to transforming livestock systems. The limited capacity of various market actors and misaligned incentives also contribute to the exclusion of many smallholder farmers from livestock market systems, further minimizing the uptake of appropriate innovations. Such inefficiencies and inadequacies lead to high transaction costs, which in turn translate to higher costs of animal-sourced foods.

In this sub-theme, we undertake market systems diagnosis in collaboration with other themes and actors on the ground (including the private sector, development agencies, governmental entities, and others) to identify system-level constraints to livestock systems and generate intelligence, which we use to co-design technological and institutional interventions for inclusive and efficient livestock market system. Meanwhile, we undertake adoption studies to establish the suitability and inclusivity of co-designed innovations, thereby helping to refine interventions. We then conduct experimental and ex-post impact assessments, taking into consideration gender and social inclusion, to evaluate the impact of innovations on the performance of livestock market systems.

What we do

  • Explore, test and evaluate behavioural and institutional innovations that enhance efficient delivery of technologies and services to farmers and other value chain actors.
  • Evaluate approaches to support the delivery of safe and affordable animal-sourced foods to consumers.
  • Identify systems-level constraints to livestock systems and generate intelligence to inform the co-design of technological and institutional interventions for implementation and evaluation.
  • Adoption studies will establish the suitability and inclusivity of co-designed innovations and help refine interventions, while experimental and ex-post impact assessments will be conducted, taking gender and social inclusion into consideration, to evaluate the impact of the innovations on the performance of livestock market systems.