The purpose of the Market-Oriented Rice Development project (MOReDeP) is to increase farmers’ income through promoting rice production in Zambia. MOReDeP has been conducting a number of activities towards this end, and this third article in the series of the project activity introduction is about the “Market-Oriented Rice Farming Model” (or Rice SHEP model), which is a unique feature of the project.

The last two articles introduced “Research and Technology Development” and “Extension through Rice Cluster Approach”. By these activities, it is expected that the use of the developed techniques would spread among existing and new rice farmers and that rice production will increase in the formed rice clusters. Since the purpose of the project is to increase farmers’ income through promoting rice production, it is essential to ensure the income of each farmer actually increases along with the promotion of the rice production. In addition, for further promotion of rice production, rice must be an attractive crop for farmers. Thus, the MOReDeP developed the “Market-Oriented Rice Farming Model” under the theme of “rice production as a business”. The project conducts activities to enhance farmers’ knowledge and business skills to improve their income, such as selling their produced rice and also improving market access by rice farmers.