How-to-guide: Rural Business Accelerator Approach - CHAIN project
In many rural areas there is limited commercial growth of micro and small enterprises. Like most family businesses, these businesswomen and men typically do not think about business plans, sales and marketing strategies, financial management and accounting (especially separating business and family finances), and human resource development, among other topics. The accelerator program supported the growth of businesses who were interested to increase size and income.
About this guide
Click here for the Khmer version.
The Cambodia Horticulture Advancing Income & Nutrition (CHAIN) worked successfully on transforming local vegetable markets, building productive commercial relationships between agri-input sellers, vegetable traders and producers using a market systems approach. One of the key components of a market systems approach is ensuring that first movers trial innovative ideas, but also that those same ideas spread across a community or market system in order to achieve further scale and more systemic (and systematic) transformation. CHAIN worked with Lead Farmers and incubated small businesses in the market system in order to help long-term transformations. Two guides were developed:
1. Lead Farmer Business Incubator Approach
Many extension approaches use champion farmers as a means to disseminate knowledge to their peers. This is often not sustainable as these farmers are not getting rewarded. At the same time, commercial extension providers find it hard to cover the first mile in the value chain and reach farmers. The Lead Farmer method solves this first-mile market linkage between farmers and input or output markets by taking up the input, or output market function coupled with extension as a micro-business. The incubator program helped interested farmers to start such micro-businesses that could generate additional income while simultaneously addressing these market gaps. This guide supports the process of incubating lead farmers.
2. Rural Business Accelerator Approach
Many micro and small businesses in the rural areas struggle to grow and become more sustainable, especially in the agri-food sector. CHAIN supported these businesses with essential business skills based on the business model canvas through interactive sessions, peer learning exchanges and working on their business plans. This guide explains when to use B2B and its steps, and focuses mostly on market research, production planning with farmers, and making deals with buyers and input suppliers.
Together these two approaches form the basis of building out a thriving rural market system where small business models sustain innovations after the development actors transition out of direct implementation.
