GAFSP: why agricultural development should start with smallholder farmers

Описание: Smallholder farmers produce 80% of the world’s food. When they thrive, it reduces malnutrition and poverty, and increases global stability.

With climate change, conflict, COVID-19, and other crises impacting smallholder farmers, financing agricultural development is essential.

That’s where The Global Agriculture and Food Security Program, or GAFSP, comes in.
GAFSP provides grants, blended finance solutions, and concessional financing to boost food security, nutrition, climate resilience, and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries, including countries in conflict situations.

GAFSP is supporting projects like scaling up community gardens, supporting women to open their own bank accounts, and fixing the roads that lead to outdoor markets. It has provided $1.6 billion in financial and technical resources to support more than 15 million smallholders and their families. The Program partners with UN agencies, development banks, the private sector, and smallholder farmers’ organizations to strengthen food and agriculture systems.

Here’s how it works: Donor partners contribute to the fund. Then, a country’s government or a Producer’s Organization, like a farming cooperative or a small business, can work with a UN Agency or a development bank to apply for funds to complete a specific project.

What makes GAFSP unique is that civil society and smallholder farmers, alongside donors, development agencies, and country partners, influence the direction of the Program. They review project proposals and have a say in how to allocate funds to countries and farmers’ organizations. When grants are awarded, governments are required to report on the involvement of local civil society and farmers’ organizations in the design and implementation of their project.

Small farmers' organizations have input throughout the process, because agricultural development starts with smallholder farmers.

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To learn more, visit:
https://www.actionaidusa.org/work/gafsp/
http://gafspfund.org/

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