Agriculture

What makes us different

• We have five decades of experience of working with smallholder farmers who are vulnerable to climate change and have strong expertise in how agriculture can work well for people and planet – agroforestry, integrated water management, increasing soil organic matter, seed systems, regenerative and conservation agriculture​​
• We have long-standing experience in techniques for analysing and facilitating market systems that work for vulnerable farmers (Participatory Market Systems Development and Market Interest Groups).​
• The combination of our deep understanding in these areas gives us the ability to work effectively with others to make the changes that can deliver more sustainable agriculture, better food security and livelihoods for vulnerable farming communities. ​​

Policy and influence

We promote the benefits of agroecological approaches to governments, development agencies and the private sector as an essential part of national strategies for food security, economic development and poverty reduction.

We call for:

• Agriculture and development policies that purposely include smallholder farmers and the marginalised rural poor, especially women smallholder farmers, working towards the SDGs in a way that is inclusive and works for the majority.
• Climate adaptation funding that supports developing countries to innovate truly climate smart agroecological solutions, not business as usual commercial monoculture, with more emphasis on multi-commodity and systems research.
• Research and investment in agroecological approaches as a means of improving both smallholder productivity and resilience through the co-generation of locally relevant and adoptable solutions to productivity and coping with the changing climate.
• Governments, donors, development agencies and the private sector that work through market systems and the private sector to provide a means of achieving scale – in particular to incentivise the adoption of agroecological practices in markets by the private sector.