Solid, professional producer organizations are a critical factor for the development of sustainable supply chains in commodities with large smallholder participation. The project will support POs in building business professionalism so they can function better as agribussinesses, become less risky clients for local banks and provide value-added services to their members.
PO leaders in multiple cohorts will receive training and coaching and follow-up over six months, supporting leaders beyond the classroom.
Farmer Professionalization Standardization Key
In partnership with development organizations, private partners, commodity traders, donors and financial institutions in the agribusiness industry, NCBA CLUSA joined in launching the Agribusiness Market Ecosystem Alliance (AMEA), which aims to impact more than 150,000 smallholder farmers worldwide.
An initiative of SCOPEinsight, the AMEA platform was submitted as a Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative, bringing together crosssector partners to standardize metrics for assessing farmer performance and developing a training system more closely aligned to farmer needs.
“Farmers face critical challenges, such as food insecurity, increasing poverty and climate change. We share the belief that farming is a business and professionalism is the key to help break the poverty cycle many farmers are caught in. AMEA will make a standardized approach available for improving farming as a business for the smallholder farmer,” said Lucas Simons, CEO of SCOPEinsight. The AMEA platform will develop a global approach, standardized and collaborative, for smallholder famers to improve business professionalism and farming as a business.
Once professionalized, producer organizations can make market connections through networks like the Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA), a key partner for this project. FtMA employs a comprehensive value chain approach to transform existing agricultural practices through four strategic pathways, providing smallholder farmers with access to predictable markets, affordable finance, quality farming inputs and effective post-harvest handling and storage (PHHS) and other agricultural technologies. The aim is to actively engage smallholders, increase their productivity, profitability and resilience and their strength as reliable market players.