Systems perspective on partnership governance in smallholder agricultural value chains

Smallholder farmers face numerous challenges when participating in and upgrading their position in value chains. The amount of resources that farmers have, also referred to as their asset base, is important when creating and sustaining competitive value chains. Unfortunately, smallholders often face constraints in some or all of the human, social, financial, natural, and institutional assets that are needed in order to succeed (Lie et al. 2012). From a systems perspective, these limits on the farm asset base have important feedback effects that compound market access constraints over time and reduce the ability of policy-makers and donors to successfully intervene in pro-poor value chains. The smallholder dairy goat farmers of Twawose association in Mgeta, Tanzania exemplify this problem (Lie et al. 2012). While collectively, and with strategic public sector support, they have managed to improve their asset base enough to collect and process goat milk into drinking yogurt for sale at the local market. However, this group has not yet managed to penetrate larger urban markets, which limits the potential of small dairy farmers to develop