Project
The Missing Middle
In low and middle income countries, there is a Missing Middle between agricultural production and food consumption (SDG 2) that affects vulnerable groups such as smallholder farmers and poor urban consumers. This project aims to study and address this Missing Middle in four pilots in Tanzania and Vietnam, two countries that face contrasting challenges in local-level implementation of their policy frameworks to achieve SDG 2 and related SDGs such as SDG 12, 13 and 15.
A framework consisting of universal principles and criteria, and localized indicators will be developed in cooperation with co-applicants and in consultation with local-level stakeholders. This framework will be applied to the pilots to determine the current contributions of these pilots to SDG 2 and related SDGs, which will make SDG synergies and trade-offs explicit for improved decision-making. Next, stakeholder workshops will be held to set desirable and localized future targets and to co-develop pathways for achieving those futures. The development of these pathways will be supported by various modelling exercises. The resulting pathways incorporate locally relevant SDG targets, synergies and trade-offs that support stakeholders in contributing to the SDGs and addressing the Missing Middle. To ensure that project outcomes contribute to policy frameworks and their local implementation, policy-makers and other decision-makers will be actively involved throughout the project.