Pathways out of Poverty Case Study: PROFIT: Creating Access to Agricultural Inputs Through an Agent Network Model

USAID commissioned a series of case studies to examine interventions and approaches to creating pathways out of poverty that either “pushed” the very poor towards productive engagement in markets and/or “pulled” the poor into markets. This case study, written by Cardno, examines how the PROFIT project used an agent network model to improve agricultural productivity in Zambia. It addresses the challenges of how a market-based approach can help reduce poverty, and finds that while the model was successful in many ways, it did not reach the “poorest of the poor.”