Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access
In the OIC Member Countries
116
Macroeconomic factors, enabling policies, and governance
Exchange rate, trade, and price policies all substantially affect the extent to which
smallholder farmers participate in and benefit from agricultural markets. Historically such
policies tended to tax agricultural producers through overvalued currencies and direct
taxation of commodities. Reforms in the 1980s and 1990s reduced direct and indirect
taxation. resents data on the nominal rates of assistance to agriculture for a
subset of OIC member countries for which comparable data are available. While some
countries such as Mozambique have gone from taxing to supporting farmers on average,
others such as Côte d’Ivoire still tax farmers heavily.
Aggregate nominal rates of assistance mask significant differences in taxation and
protection between agricultural imports and exports and among products. An average
nominal rate of assistance close to zero at the country level simply indicates no net
taxation, but it could be the result of large import tariffs offsetting large export taxes. 192 In
some countries exports are still heavily taxed, while imports are protected. This is the case
in Mozambique, where food crops such as cassava and maize have received hardly any
government support or intervention, whereas others, such as cashews, have been subject
to heavy intervention.
TABLE 23: NOMINAL RATES OF ASSISTANCE TO AGRICULTURE
Country 1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995–99 2000–04
Bangladesh 1.4 –3.3 11.7 –1.5 –5.2 2.7
Cameroon –14.4 –11.2 –2.4 –1.1 –1.3 –0.1
Côte d'Ivoire –30.8 –32.2 –24.3 –19.5 –20.0 –24.5
Egypt, Arab Republic –15.9 –9.2 56.6 –6.1 4.0 –6.1
Indonesia 9.3 9.2 –1.7 –6.6 –8.6 12.0
Malaysia –13.0 –4.6 1.3 2.3 –0.2 1.2
Mozambique –34.5 –25.2 –32.0 –2.7 3.9 12.4
Nigeria 6.3 9.4 8.2 3.9 0.4 –5.4
Pakistan –8.5 –6.4 –4.0 –6.9 –1.6 1.2
Senegal –22.7 –20.5 4.7 5.6 –6.1 –7.5
Sudan –24.3 –29.3 –35.4 –47.8 –24.5 –11.9
Turkey –8.0 –30.0 4.0 20.0 21.0 20.0
Uganda –-17.6 –6.2 –6.8 –0.6 0.5 0.4
Source: Anderson and Martin 2007; Anderson and Masters 2007; Burrell and Kurzweil 2007.
In addition to macroeconomic and trade policies, the quality of policies and regulations
related to agricultural inputs (seed, fertilizer, irrigation, and drainage), land, natural
resources, domestic marketing, agricultural R&D, extension, food safety, biosafety, grades
and standards, plant protection, and animal health measures all influence the effectiveness
and efficiency of markets and the extent to which smallholders access and benefit from
markets (for an example from Chile, see . Policies intended to prop up traditional
crops or to anticipate emerging winners will likely fail, but policies that support farmers
and investors along the value chain can provide a framework that promotes adaptation
and success for the sector as a whole. Beyond these considerations, a country’s contract
192 World Bank (2007).