FARM-Africa

Organisation name 

FARM-Africa

Country 

United Kingdom

Contact details 

Website http://www.farmafrica.org.uk/
Email farmafrica@farmafrica.org.uk

Testimonial

"FARM-Africa has been working to reduce poverty among African farmers for over 20 years. Being short-listed for the Alcan Prize for Sustainability will help us showcase the potential in Africa's farmers. It recognises the hard work and dedication of our staff and partners and will help to show that agriculture is critical to poverty reduction."
Dr Christie Peacock, CEO

Financial resources

US$14,641,400 (2006)

Geographical focus

Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, South Africa/Africa

Issue focus

Environment, poverty alleviation

Key achievements

• Pioneered new models of sustainable rural agriculture, livestock production and forest management that significantly increase yields while minimising environmental impact.
• Has directly impacted on the lives of over one million people each year for ten years.
• Methodologies increasingly implemented at national level.

Mission

FARM-Africa's vision is of 'a prosperous rural Africa', where poor rural communities produce enough food to survive and thrive without handouts. Recognising that poor communities often know the solutions to their problems, FARM-Africa works directly with communities to build their capacity, help them identify the problems limiting their agricultural production and then find the appropriate solutions together. It aims to achieve prosperity for poor rural communities through:

• Practical, specialist help to produce more food. 
• Improved access to markets.
• Innovation in agriculture and dissemination of innovation.
• Building local capacity and influencing policy to encourage sustainable development.

Background

FARM-Africa is a British development agency which has been working in Africa since 1985. Recognising that 80 per cent of Africa's people are farmers and depend on the food they grow and the livestock they keep for survival, FARM-Africa works with rural communities, initiating community-led development projects that embrace sustainability and community ownership. FARM-Africa has helped hundreds of thousands of poor African households escape poverty through their own hard work, maintaining their dignity and pride.

In recognition of the fact that its expertise could have a much greater impact across Africa, FARM-Africa's new strategy is to disseminate its expertise through:

• Developing projects into models of best practice.
• Advocating an improvement in relevant government policies.
• Facilitating a demonstrable improvement in rural agricultural development by government, the non-profit sector and private sector staff.
• Increasing the understanding of, and engagement in, African agricultural development in the North and South.

Partnerships

In order to achieve its strategy, FARM-Africa works with a number of partners, from governments through to local farmer groups. Some examples of successful partnerships include:

• In Ethiopia, SOS-Sahel, a local NGO, is a key partner in the Participatory Forestry Management (PFM) projects, taking a shared role in project management with FARM-Africa.
• The Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries Development (MoLFD) in Kenya works closely with FARM-Africa in the development of its successful Kenya Dairy Goats and Capacity Building Model. The Meru Goat Breeders Association, a group of farmers developed by FARM-Africa, has seen member income increase tenfold as part of its partnership approach.

Impact achieved

In an environment where aid investment in agricultural development has fallen, and food aid spend has increased, FARM-Africa has pioneered new methods of community-led sustainable agriculture, livestock production and forest management that have had positive and measurable impacts.

Some examples include:

• Farmer research groups in Babati, Tanzania tested improved maize and bean varieties that have increased yields by 162 per cent and 79 per cent respectively.
• In Nakasongola, Uganda the dissemination of new cassava mosaic virus resistant varieties of cassava has increased gross margins from only US$6 to US$354/acre, with previously food aid dependent farmers now marketing 70 per cent of their produce, much of it through two farmer cooperative-owned cassava processing plants.
• Fifty thousand plus high-yielding crossbred goats have been produced and distributed in Kenya, providing local farmers with a 4-fold increase in dairy production.
• Over 59,000 households have directly benefited from the Ethiopian Participatory Forestry Project, the majority of whom are characterised as 'very poor'.