Productivity and growth in organic value chains in East Africa – potentials and challenges for accessing local high value markets

The project ‘Productivity and Growth in Organic Value Chains (ProGrOV)’ is a collaboration between universities in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania and Denmark addressing the need for sustainable development of smallholder farming systems in East Africa with focus on value chains for local high-value markets as well as export chains. While some research has focused on improving productivity and Natural Resource Management of smallholder farmers in Eastern Africa this has most often not been linked with studies of how to link improved production to market access and quality demands. NGO’s have demonstrated the synergy of supporting ecological intensification through improved marketing and innovation capacity of groups of smallholder farmers but only very few research projects have studied this potential synergy (Pali et al., 2007; Hawkins et al., 2009; Høgh-Jensen et al., 2010). ProGrOV contributes to the development of a platform of scientific capacity and evidence on potentials of organic value chains and agroecological approaches to agricultural development