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ABOUT IDE

IDE is a unique international social enterprise that has been helping poor farmers in developing countries escape poverty for more than 25 years. IDE has pioneered a market-based approach that has enabled millions to permanently escape poverty. IDE uses business principles to facilitate unsubsidized market systems in which the rural poor can participate effectively as micro-entrepreneurs and earn income. In this way, our programs create an environment that helps small farmers progress from subsistence agriculture to commercial farming, beginning an upward spiral out of chronic deprivation and vulnerability.

IDE is an international non-profit organization with affiliates in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.

OUR APPROACH: Markets that Serve the Poor

Markets can have a powerful positive impact on the lives of the rural poor. IDE has observed that the most successful smallholders--those who have lifted themselves out of abject poverty--are those who participate more fully in markets by purchasing more inputs, making effective use of technical knowledge and market information, and developing stable linkages to output markets.

In our programs worldwide, IDE helps create market conditions that enable the rural poor to become successful market participants. Concepts and practices usually associated with private business are applied to the problem of poverty as IDE works to:

1. Identify market opportunities that can be exploited by poor people
2. Develop technologies that the poor can use to generate income
3. Establish supply chains to deliver technologies to the poor at affordable prices
4. Conduct promotional campaigns to convince smallholders to invest in income-generating technologies
5. Establish linkages with output markets
6. Ensure that everyone in the market network, especially the small farmer, receives a fair profit