This paper examines collective action as an option for addressing obstacles for smallholders linking to markets, specifically for marketing of underutilised tropical fruits. These are of importance for nutrition, cultural value and contribution to income and improved market chains will increase income and incentives for production to maintain diversity. The report includes a description of the conceptual framework for collective action. The report comprises three cases studies as examples of good marketing practices for biodiversity.

This report presents the findings of a scoping study to examine ways to increase the income of mango smallholders in eastern Indonesia as part of a supply chain. The analysis focused on researching issues in profitable supply chains, rather than identifying technical constraints. The findings reveal that current markets are heavily supplied with the Harumanis mango variety with little opportunity to develop new market opportunities in either export or out of season markets in other areas of Indonesia.

Maize farmers in East Nusa Tenggara have been slow to adopt new cultivation technologies despite several initiatives by the Indonesian government. A key challenge for farmers is access to the required inputs—improved varieties, fertilizer and pesticides. This research aimed to identify a suitable agribusiness model for subsistence/semi-commercial maize farmers to help address their challenges in using new technologies. Research was conducted with three farmer groups in South Timor Tengah district in 2007-2008.

This paper explores the experience of contract farming between Garuda Food—represented locally by PT Bumi Mekar Tani—and peanut smallholders in West Nusa Tenggara. The research uses data gathered from a survey of 713 smallholders (contract and non-contract farmers) from 72 farmers groups in seven peanut growing districts, as well as semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders.

This report reviews previous agroforestry, forage and livestock projects in eastern Indonesia to assess the potential for integrated timber-forage-livestock agroforestry systems to improve the incomes of smallholder farmers in West Timor. It identifies strategies for developing more acceptable systems, proposes methods for their implementation and provides an assessment and analysis of the constraints to adoption of research results. The scoping study included field investigation and a social survey in West Timor in 2007.

Increased beef demand and prices could increase smallholder cash flow and production if feed quantity and quality limitations could be addressed. This project assessed the potential use of cocoa by-products as a cattle feed and various forage and tree legumes in managed grazing systems in South East Sulawesi (Sultra). Methodology involved laboratory, research facility and on farm trials. Results indicate cocoa pods could successfully be fed to Bali cattle (10-15g DM/kg live weight/d) while contributing to cocoa pod borer management and using simple low-cost processing for storage.

The low weight of Bali cattle for sale was a major issue related to smallholder farmer poverty and an impediment to the development of a cattle industry in eastern Indonesia. An ACIAR-funded research team established that the low weight was due to poor management, particularly nutrition, which led to low reproductive efficiency, and poor survival and growth of the calf.

This report identifies legumes for use in maize and upland rice-based systems of East Nusa Tenggara and contains additional information on biomass and seed production, agronomy (sowing, configuration, pests, weeds, disease) and benefits from legume use.

While many forages suitable for improving livestock production in mixed crop-livestock systems in the tropics have been identified, their adoption has been limited. Before farmers will introduce new forages into their farming system an important prerequisite is that the change will be considered profitable, will have an acceptable level of risk and will not interfere with food security. This paper describes a whole farm systems approach used to identify the benefits of new forages to improve Bali cattle production in the smallholder mixed crop-livestock systems of eastern Indonesia.

This report presents findings from a project aiming to help smallholder farmers improve cattle production in eastern Indonesia by introducing forages into their cropping systems. It identified several factors constraining livestock production in smallholder farming systems, and found that most technologies needed to address the constraints are already available in Indonesia or elsewhere, but have not yet been adopted by local farmers.