Farmers' forum

The Farmers' Forum is a bottom-up process of consultation and dialogue between small farmers' and rural producers' organizations, IFAD and governments, focused on rural development and poverty reduction.  Fully aligned with IFAD's strategic objectives, the Forum is rooted in concrete partnership and collaboration at the country and regional levels. Engagement with rural organizations at the field level and dialogue at the regional and international level are articulated as mutually reinforcing processes.  Following consultations at the national and regional level,the Farmer's Forum meets every two years for a global consultation, in conjunction with the Governing Council of IFAD.  The first such meeting was held in February 2006, the second meeting took place in February 2008 and the third global meeting took place on 15-16 February 2010 in conjunction with the Thirth-third session of IFAD's Governing Council. The fourth global meeting took place from 18-23 February 2012.

Why a Farmers' Forum

Extreme poverty remains a daily reality for more than one billion people. Hunger and malnutrition affect some 1 billion people, and in developing countries more than a quarter of all children under the age of five are malnourished. Most of the world’s poor live in rural areas: fully 75 percent of those living in extreme poverty – over 1.2 million people – are to be found there.  Most are dependent in some way on agriculture, and the vast majority are directly engaged in the sector. 

IFAD is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries. Its mission statement is a simple one: to enable the rural poor to overcome poverty.  In other words, IFAD’s focus is on rural poor people themselves. The position of development as human development, and not merely its economic dimension, resonates deeply within IFAD: IFAD has learned over the years that no one can “do” development for people. Rather, people can be helped – or enabled – to have better opportunities and capacities to forge better futures for themselves. For IFAD they are the experts and agents of change, not development agencies, not governments.

IFAD’s mission is articulated by six strategic objectives:

• Natural resources, especially secure access to land and water, and improved natural resource management and conservation practices
• Improved agricultural technologies and effective production services
• A broad range of financial services
• Transparent and competitive markets for agricultural inputs and produce
• Opportunities for rural off-farm employment and enterprise development
• Local and national policy and programming processes
  

IFAD is aware that investments in capacity building and access to resources and services are not enough if they are not embedded in a conducive environment characterized by pro-poor public policies. This is why the capacity-building strategic objective includes capacity building that enables poor rural people and their organizations to influence institutions and policies, including laws and regulations of relevance to rural poverty. At the same time, IFAD itself would like to see its own policies and operations influenced by the perspectives of poor rural people and their organizations.

IFAD has a long tradition of participatory approaches in the implementation of its projects at the village and community levels.  However, the design of its interventions has for a long time been the province of groups of experts, of consultants, who spend some time in the countries to develop the country programmes.  IFAD also has a long history in supporting village communities, organizations and self-help groups.  Years of experience have demonstrated that helping the emergence of such grassroots organizations, through NGOs or others, does not adequately address the sustainability of these small organizations that are created or supported by public finance programmes.

Over the past decade, new and independent farmers’ organizations have emerged in many developing countries. IFAD has recognized them as central stakeholders defending the interests of rural poor people in an increasingly competitive and global market. IFAD has stepped up its support to building the capacity of these organizations.  It has also increased its collaboration with them as interlocutors and partners in development programmes and in policy dialogue, both as representatives of rural producers and as institutions delivering services to their members and playing a major role in rural development. In 1998 IFAD approved its first Flexible Lending Mechanism programme (Mali, SADEF) under direct management by a national association of farmers’ and civil society organizations. This pioneering initiative has been followed by others: in India, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) is responsible for implementing the entire project for earthquake-affected regions of Gujarat; in Senegal, farmers’ organizations have been involved in IFAD’s Country Programme Evaluation and in the formulation of the recent Country Strategic Opportunities Programme (COSOP), and a local farmer federation is directly implementing a component of the most recently approved project in the country;  in Rwanda and Burkina Faso, new projects under preparation foresee substantive involvement of farmers’ organizations; and in Latin America, farmers’ and rural producers’ organizations are actively engaged in projects in Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and the Dominican Republic.

Beyond collaboration at project level, as IFAD’s own interest to engage in policy dialogue has been growing, so has its interest to broaden the scope of its collaboration with national and international farmers’ organizations, which can provide the policy perspectives essential to ensure that national institutional and policy development relate to the interests and possibilities of their members. On their side, major global or regional farmers’ organizations – for example, the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP), the Network of Peasant and Agricultural Producers Organisations of West Africa (ROPPA) and the Coordination of Family Farms of MERCOSUR (COPROFAM) – have been requesting more collaboration with, or support from, IFAD.