Small-scale farmers often don't adopt technologies that build resilience, like stress-tolerant seeds and index insurance, because they don't provide benefits in every year. New research shows how to maximize learning with these technologies to quickly build lasting adoption and long-term resilience in rural communities.
Improving index insurance products, contract design, marketing and policy can contribute to delivering on its promise of promoting independence, prosperity and resilience among these smallholder farmers.
By adapting traditional financial products delivered by microfinance institutions, and making them more flexible to meet the needs of farmers and rural inhabitants, many of these challenges faced by index insurance can be overcome.
Exposed to the forces of trade liberalization and globalization, smallholder farmers face an uncertain future. Our project will carry out research in Guatemala to explore three innovations that offer the potential to enhance the competitiveness of smallholder agriculture.