Development of farms in a market economy depends to a large extent on achieving improved farm enterprise profitability and competitiveness. This is possible through reliance on the private sector to provide services. Few donors involved with farm enterprise development still deliver services directly to farmers. Instead, they increasingly use support service organisations or business intermediaries for service provision. The objective of this shift has been to enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of service providers.

The new thinking in Business Development Services (BDS) is based around emphasis on demand side perspectives, a broad range of service provisions, customer focus, private sector involvement in functioning markets, private goods, and financing through the use of customer-provided transactions. The business service instruments used are training, extension, consultancy, workshops, technology development, information and market linkages.

Occasional Paper No. 18: Business Services in support of farm enterprise development: A review of relative experiences.

This Occasional Paper presents the findings of a study on approaches to the design and delivery of business services to farmers and rural entrepreneurs. The paper is intended to provide insight into the provision of business services at the primary production level amongst farmers and rural entrepreneurs. It also reviews the range of services offered and discusses their performance, impact and sustainability. The document provides a ‘snapshot’ of the state of the art concerning the provision of BDS, an analysis of case studies relating to agricultural and rural development, and the identification of outstanding issues and recommendations for implementation.

Working Document No. 13: Business Services in support of farm enterprise development: Case studies

This Working Document describes the findings of case studies in Africa and Asia on the provision of Business Development Services (BDS) for farmers and rural entrepreneurs. It examines different approaches to the design and delivery of business services and reviews the range of services offered, cost recovery mechanisms and the performance, impact and sustainability of donor funded initiatives.