Rural Business Development Services

Pluralistic extension (or pluralistic agricultural advisory services) can be defined as the entire set of organizations that support and facilitate people engaged in agricultural production to solve problems and to obtain information, skills, and technologies to improve their livelihoods and well-being. It includes public–private partnerships and outsourcing to the private sector and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). From: Birner, R., Davis, K., Pender, J., Nkonya, E., Ponniah, A., Ekboir, J. M., Mbabu, A. N., et al. (2006). From “best practice” to “best fit”: a framework for designing and analysing pluralistic agricultural advisory services. http://search.kit.nl/vivisimo/cgi-bin/query-meta.exe?v%3aproject=kit-portal-RIS&query=link-key%3aMINISIS-644845.

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Interventions aimed at business service provision and designed and developed by donors have commonly been termed Business Development Services (BDS). BDS has largely focused on reducing poverty by raising the incomes of farmers and rural entrepreneurs. The term ‘business services’, refers to the range of non-financial services provided to micro and small enterprises (MSEs) at various stages in their development. They embody a market development approach to the  provision of support services. From: FAO. (2007). Business services in support of farm enterprise development: a review of relevant experiences. ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1448e/a1448e.pdf. See also "Pluralistic extension" in this glossary.

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Accountability in is a key element in demand-oriented business development services. Chain actors downstream in the value chain must be sensitive to the needs of those upstream, but at the same time upstream actors such as smallholders or farmer associations cannot afford to play the role of passive consumers, but instead must play an active role in clarifying their demands. They can do so, because services are paid for, directly or indirectly. In the last case we speak of embedded services.

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A value chain refers to the entire system of production, processing and market in of a particular product, from inception to the finished product (Example of a simple coffee value chain). A value chain consists of a series of chain actors (input suppliers, farmers, traders, processors, retailers), linked together by flows of products, finance, information and services (both represented by the dotted lines: <- - - ->). In this way, the small-scale businesses of asset-poor farmers at the beginning of the chain are intimately connected with larger businesses of traders, food processors and supermarket chains at the end. The services delivered along the value chain are mostly embedded services. [source: Value chain finance: beyond microfinance for rural entrepeneurs (2010) KIT/IIRR]

Above: example of a simple coffee value chain
 

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learning among participants or stakeholders. In systems thinking, learning is the emergence of new knowledge among stakeholders in the course of a conscious, usually facilitated session or series of learning sessions.

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See glossary term  for “value chains”.

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See glossary  term  for “value chains”

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