Mountain Partnership
Languages menu:
Mountain Partnership
« Mountain Partnership Web site
Mountain Products Programme
There is increasing demand around the world for high-quality, high-value products. Foods and beverages such as coffee, honey, herbs and spices. Speciality items such as handicrafts, cosmetics and medicines. This ‘globalization of markets’ is offering important new opportunities for competitive producers at the national, regional and international levels.
But even although many of these sought-after products and services come from mountain areas, mountain people rarely exploit the market potential and reap the benefits. Indeed, they are often still engaged in producing staple commodities whose prices are declining and markets are being squeezed.
The potential for high-quality, high-value products to increase the incomes and improve the livelihoods of mountain farmers exists in every major region of the world. So how can we transform products from mountains into high-quality, high-value products? And how can we enable mountain people to access niche markets, compete in markets and fetch premuim prices for their high-quality, high-value goods and services at home and abroad?
These issues are at the core of the Mountain Products Programme. It brings together partners from countries, UN agencies, IGOs, NGOs and the private sector to provide mountain people with the organization, market linkages, technology and know-how that will enable them to participate in markets for high-quality, high-value mountain products in the rapidly expanding urban centres of developing countries and for export to more industrialized countries.
The Programme is already working towards these goals in the Andes, Central Asia, East Africa, North Africa and the Middle East, and the Hindu-Kush Himalaya. Its partners are developing a solid information and knowledge base on high-quality, high-value mountain products, improving the capacity of regional, national and local institutions to support the production, processing and marketing of these products, as well as.creating enabling policy and institutional environments and establishing public-private partnerships to promote high-quality, high-value mountain products
Events
Seminar: Quality Food Products Linked to Geographical Origin and Traditions in the Mediterranean’
(Casablanca, Morocco, 8-9 November 2007)
Flyer
Information note
- Weak communication infrastructures
- Lack of information, training and expertise in new agricultural technologies
- Lack of registration, certification and labelling to protect products Inadequate marketing skills
- Lack of wider market access
- High transport costs
- Unfair trade
Mountain people typically face many obstacles to producing, marketing and selling high-quality, high-value products:
