With roughly three-quarters of the world’s poor people living in rural areas, addressing global poverty requires paying attention to rural populations, especially smallholder farmers in developing countries. Millions of smallholders and others among the developing world’s poor, including a large proportion of women, participate as producers, labourers, traders, processors, retailers or consumers in agricultural value chains. Improving the performance of these chains has the potential to benefit large numbers of low-income and poor people. This brief by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) assesses how to improve agricultural value chains, particularly those that include smallholders.