Expanding Market Access to the Last Mile of the Fertilizer Value Chain: Complementarities between OCP Farmer Houses and Village Input Fairs in Senegal
Summary
How should investments be sequenced geographically to vertically integrate fertilizer supply chains to address last mile problems of market access? The researchers test the effect of two last-mile solutions and their integration. The OCP Farmer House extends the fertilizer value chain to rural secondary towns, which serves as a hub for agricultural inputs, extension advice, and agricultural services. OCP Farmer House investments are designed to reach a wide catchment area, but OCP staff are unclear how to extend the geographic reach of these investments. The Village Input Fair model (VIF) creates rural input markets in villages by organizing ag-dealers in the post-harvest period to facilitate input purchase orders. Independently, investments in secondary towns or at the village level may increase farmer input demand, knowledge, yields, and welfare. The OCP Farmer House and Village Input Fairs may also be complementary, further increasing the key outcomes by integrating the input supply chain, improving market access to rural smallholder farmers. The proposed design will allow us to disentangle the effects of each intervention independently and together while estimating the complementary returns to investing in secondary towns and villages. Integrated with the quantitative impact evaluation will be a lab-in-the-field experiment and a qualitative exploration of farmer trust, a key constraint to the introduction of new market institutions required to implement last-mile innovations in rural contexts.
Overall, this evaluation examines whether combining the Village Input Fair (VIF) model with the Farmer House initiative improves the timing, proximity, and effectiveness of input delivery within broader seasonal agronomic support systems.
What are OCP Farmer Houses (i.e., Farm & Fortune Hubs)?
OCP Farmer Houses are established physical centers in underserved agrarian communities in secondary towns, led by OCP Africa (as part of the OCP Nutricrops ecosystem). They provide farmers with essential agricultural inputs and services. These hubs offer high-quality fertilizers, seeds, and phytosanitary products, along with training on good agricultural practices (GAP), soil analysis, financial services, market connections, and mechanization support. Products sold through the Farmer Houses are not limited to OCP products, as there are multiple partners involved. Farmer Houses aim to improve the distribution of agricultural resources and enhance the productivity and livelihoods of farming communities, while operating like a business.
What are Village Input Fairs (VIFs)?
Village Input Fairs (VIFs) are temporary, village-level input markets originally evaluated in Mali through a randomized controlled trial under the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI). The VIF model is a one-day agricultural input fair organized in rural villages where farmers do not have direct access to agricultural inputs. The innovation is distinguished by four research-based insights on building markets: time, place, commitment, and trust. At VIFs, farmers use their post-harvest liquidity (time) to place purchase orders directly with agro-dealers who organize the fair in their village (place) with a 10 percent deposit (commitment). During the planting season, the market clears with inputs delivered and purchase orders paid which is verified by a third party through our digital platform and onsite verification (trust). Evidence from Mali showed that post-harvest VIFs with flexible payment mechanisms increased fertilizer demand by 20–28 percent, particularly among smaller and less-connected farmers, highlighting the importance of timing and liquidity in addressing last-mile market constraints.
OCP x VIF
Building on this evidence, the VIF and the OCP models are now being adapted and integrated into broader last-mile initiatives in Senegal (current study) and Côte d’Ivoire to strengthen input access and farmer inclusion.