STEP-UP Project combines Sustainable Intensification (SI) and Market Linkage (ML) strategies to enable Small Farm Enterprises (SFEs) to step up towards food and nutrition security, sustainable development and income generation. Through a participatory multi-stakeholder approach promising technologies will be identified, implemented and assessed in mango and banana food value chains (FVC) in Kenya and Uganda. These case studies represent different stages in the transition process of “stepping up” through ML and SI. Data collection methods will include literature review, farm surveys, key-Informant, focus group discussions with farmers and key stakeholders, and monitoring of selected indicators
Compared to the required growth in global food production of 70-110% by 2050, the expected 2.5 fold increase in population in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), puts enormous pressure on the smallholder agricultural sector, where food insecurity, poverty and vulnerability to climate change are stringent challenges already.
Sustainable intensification (SI) provides a pathway to meet the growing demands in food and achieve market-relevant production quantity and quality. SI evolved from its primary focus on agricultural productivity, profitability and environmental protection to inclusion of social and human well-being at multiple scales. However, in practice adoption of many promising SI solutions remains disappointing amongst others due to poor linkages to input and output markets and high investment risks. Participatory analysis of food systems allows identifying and adapting market linkages (ML) and SI strategies to improve crop production, postharvest processing, marketing, income generation, and value creation, based on a comprehensive understanding of social, ecological, economic and institutional opportunities and risks. This requires a disaggregated analysis of smallholders farms enterprises’ (SFEs) structural diversity, multiple roles in the informal and formal economic sector and their complex inter-linkages with up-stream supplier networks and downstream processors of food, the intermediaries, as well as trade and market agents.
In East Africa, Kenya is one of the leading mango producers with current annual production of 600.000 – 800.000 tons. However, the bulk of the mangoes, primarily of old fibrous cultivars, are wasted because of the lack of processing facilities, bad quality and poor infrastructure .
Uganda is the leading banana-producing country in Africa, with the East African highland banana (EAHB) cultivar a staple to an estimated 10 million Ugandans. The banana marketing relies on complex food value chains (FVC) and is challenged by poor infrastructure. The export of dessert bananas is constrained by poor fruit quality due to handling and ripening
difficulties and the distance to international ports.
STEP-UP will upgrade the banana and mango food systems through an innovative cross-fertilization of two research domains (food value chain analysis and farming systems analysis) to reveal high-potential SI and ML strategies towards sustainable development.
STEP-UP combines research-, development- and outreach-oriented activities in five Work Packages (WPs), and implements sustainable intensification (SI) and market linkage (ML) strategies to enable small farm enterprises (SFEs) to step up towards food and nutrition security, sustainable development and income generation.