Outcome harvest: influencing systemic changes in agricultural market systems in south west Bangladesh

USAID's Feed the Future (FTF) Bangladesh Rice and Diversified Crops Activity worked to increase incomes and improve food security and nutrition in the 22 southern Bangladeshi districts from 2016-2021.

This outcome harvest focuses on:

• Which business models promoted by the Activity resulted in systemic changes
• The scope and characteristics of these systemic changes
• Which influences contributed to these systemic changes

Despite two negative consequences of work - supply constraints hampering the marketing of new products and digital illiteracy threatening to exclude some marginalised groups - the report documents some consequential changes in the performance of agricultural market systems in the region.

Four themes emerged from the analysis of the Activity's work:

• it extended and deepened market actor engagement in the FTF zone
• it helped market actors experiment with innovations and operational improvements
• with the Activity’s support, several actors developed new, specialised services or discovered markets for relatively niche products
• it facilitated a massive increase in the flow of useful information moving between all types of market actors in the FTF zone

Read the blog: Using market-based approaches to respond to shocks: insights from Bangladesh

View also the May 2022 BEAM webinar Responding to shocks using market-based approaches: insights from RDC Bangladesh