Restrictions on movement and gatherings prevented producers accessing the inputs and labour they needed at crucial times, leading to smaller harvests and catches, which the farmers, entrepreneurs and fishers then struggled to sell because markets were closed or too expensive to reach.

This cut incomes and upset cash flow, and was made worse by unemployment and reduced remittances. Often people simply could not get the information they needed to adapt to the new challenges. Producers felt abandoned as governments struggled to contain a global pandemic that spread with unprecedented speed. And water became a vital weapon in the fight against disease.

As reports of this crisis poured in, IFAD mobilized resources and allocated them to support rural communities through the Rural Poor Stimulus Facility (RPSF).

The RPSF reached more than 20 million of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. It now provides a valuable model for the kind of support communities need to weather catastrophes and quickly start rebuilding secure food and hygiene systems for the medium and longer term.

RPSF funding was channelled via IFAD-supported country programmes.

This was largely in low-income and lower-middle-income countries, especially those with fragile situations.

Governments, project management teams, farmers’ organizations, NGOs and other partners worked together to ensure fast delivery. We focused on the most effective ways of helping small-scale producers.

When COVID-19 struck, fish merchants in Djibouti could not travel to markets: unsold fish was being thrown away. The RPSF funded coldrooms and other equipment so that fish could be preserved – reducing waste, and boosting nutrition and incomes. Travel restrictions triggered by the pandemic often caused shortages of inputs, or highlighted the absence of storage facilities needed for flexible food supply chains. The RPSF brought enduring solutions to both short-term difficulties and their underlying causes.

In Zambia support from the RPSF enabled Mabvuio Zulli to get the vaccines he needed to immunize his herd of 30 cattle against East Coast fever and other diseases – despite pandemic-related trade restrictions and supply shortages.

Zakaria Amara Baby and other farmers around Gouraye in the semi-arid Guidimaka region of Mauritania used to farm during the winter rainy season, then migrate elsewhere during the rest of the year. Movement restrictions that accompanied COVID-19 forced them to stay. The RPSF funded water towers, pipes and climate-resilient seeds. Now they can irrigate and farm all year round, producing onions, eggplant, carrots, watermelon and other crops even during the dry summer months. 

Savelio Vasega is a fisherman on Upolu Island in the Samoan archipelago. When COVID-19 disrupted trade, Savelio and other fishermen played a pivotal role in ensuring their communities’ food security. He mainly hand-harvests limu fuafua – or “sea grapes”  – a nutritious seaweed considered a delicacy throughout the Pacific Islands. With support from the RPSF and the Australian Government, the Pacific Islands Rural and Agriculture Stimulus Facility (PIRAS) provided him with a traditional wooden canoe and processing equipment that helped boost his business and income.  

In the highlands of Fiji’s Ba Province, the pandemic helped drive a shift away from subsistence farming. With support from the RPSF and the Australian Government, the Pacific Islands Rural and Agriculture Stimulus Facility (PIRAS) encouraged farmers to work together in the traditional solesolevaki system. By pooling produce and labour, they were able to process, package and market cassava flour and turmeric locally and for export. This gave them access to new markets, boosted incomes, and broke the isolation brought on by pandemic restrictions on social gatherings.

Inadequate food preservation and storage facilities have long impaired farm incomes and food security. COVID movement restrictions often compounded the problem. So the RPSF provided women’s groups across Sierra Leone with curing and drying machines for their onion crop, and back-up generators to run them. Now the onions are cured and stored in a communal warehouse, they get better prices, and have increased production.

Gum arabic is a lucrative cash crop that has many health benefits when eaten, and that is used to control viscosity in products ranging from cosmetics to inks. In Sudan, the RPSF provided Mohamed Siddig with training to help him improve his production and processing techniques. By carefully cleaning, drying, and storing the gum, formed from the sap of two species of acacia tree, and using new market connections provided by the project, Mohamed and other producers increased their incomes and recovered more quickly from the COVID-19 crisis.

Siduith Guillén Panaifo is a farmer and a member of the Allima Cacao agricultural cooperative in Peruvian Amazonia. The RPSF-supported AGRIdigitalización project introduced the group to digital platforms that showcase their cacao products to buyers, enabling them to reach new markets and opportunities.

In Mauritania the RPSF helped farmers form groups to make market connections and organize transport. Acting together, they can negotiate better prices. This provides more income today, and builds their resilience to future shocks.

Rajesh Kumar Shreevastav is the Bhairahawa Province Director for the Agricultural Development Bank Ltd, IFAD’s implementing partner for the RPSF project in Nepal. By accelerating the roll-out of the Kisan app and card, an RPSF grant improved farmer cash flows and marketing, while providing digital access to loans to speed recovery.

A subsidized loan helped fund expansion at SK Goat Farm, which has grown to become one of Nepal’s leading silage companies. Here, Basanti Gharti, one of the firm’s goat-keepers, feeds grain to part of the herd.

In the Peruvian region of San Martín, the AGRIdigitalización project funded by the RPSF introduced wide-ranging digital services for cocoa farmers. It enabled e-commerce between producers and buyers and gave online access to local financial service providers, ensuring the survival of many family farms.

In The Gambia, cash grants were channelled through the ROOTS project to 500 vulnerable households. The payments turned out to be a lifeline, not only ensuring food security, but laying the foundation to renew livelihoods, such as providing support for breadwinners of large families to build small businesses.

Farming is a dispersed industry that thrives when communications improve. By accelerating the spread of digitalization, the pandemic may prove a tipping point in the modernization of agriculture across many low- and middle-income countries.

José Dolores Castillo has been farming coffee on the slopes of Comayagua, Honduras, for fifty years. During the pandemic, rural savings banks became a lifeline for José and other coffee producers. The RPSF funded a project, Innovatech, to develop fintech and agritech digital solutions to help smallholder farmers access markets, financial services and other services in Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras and Mexico.

The pandemic prevented agricultural extension officers from visiting farmers to offer advice. In response, the Integrated Agriculture and Marketing Development Project in Sudan set up a digital message processing unit. Umsalama Musa Hamad, an agricultural extension officer, and her colleagues instead guided smallholder farmers using electronic messages.

Across the world in Guatemala, Juana Morales Rodríguez first started weaving fabrics on a single loom, selling them to a buyer in Santa Cruz, a town in the Quiché department of Guatemala. She took out a loan to expand, and now the 27-year-old mother of three is leader of her rural credit union group. The RPSF funded a digitalization campaign, and now Juana can view and manage the group’s savings and loans on a tablet. Here Diego Onésimo Rodríguez, of lender Agros International, provides training on the Mi Caja app, suggesting ways to use the tablet to promote digital literacy.

Over 1 million small-scale farmers in Pakistan were helped through the COVID crisis by an IFAD-supported project that provided advice to farmers via their mobile phones. Automated phone calls gave them crop-related advice and tips on how to become more resilient by using organic alternatives to commercial products that were no longer available due to pandemic-disrupted supply chains.

Oumoul Khair Sidi Ahmed lives in Limdheibeh, a village in southwestern Mauritania near the border with Mali. She works her market garden plot with other women from her village despite a stroke that left her partially paralysed. The RPSF was implemented during the height of the pandemic as part of the ongoing PROGRES project, jointly funded by IFAD and the government of Mauritania.

Mariama is a graduate in business administration and the chair of the Forward Women with Disability Organization (ForWDO) in Sierra Leone. The RPSF provided seeds, fertilizer and other inputs to the group, and funds to pay for labour and rent farm machinery. A good crop fed their families and earned income, partly invested in producing rice.

In Pakistan, an RPSF project helped women farmers overcome the challenges of the pandemic with personalized advice and knowledge shared via their mobile phones.

Mavis was recently widowed when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. She lives in Kangomba Ward village in Zambia’s Kabwe District, where the IFAD-backed Enhanced Smallholder Livestock Investment Programme had helped her buy a solar-powered irrigation system for her farm. But when movement was restricted and markets were closed, she was unable to sell her maize, soybeans, velvet beans and cowpeas, or hire the extra labour she needed. The RPSF helped her get back on her feet, start selling seeds, and reorganize her production.

In Sudan an RPSF grant provided training and inputs that enabled women to set up home gardens to grow vegetables. Growing cucumbers, pumpkins and other fast-maturing plants improved food supplies and diets – but still left time to share a meal.

In the highlands of Ethiopia, the RPSF funded a 50-strong “gully gang” to build gullies to channel seasonal rainwater into managed irrigation, reducing soil erosion and the effects of climate change. The team comprised young men such as Terrefe Tsega, whose livelihoods had been hit by the pandemic.

In Madagascar, the RPSF helped equip relay farmers such as Daniel Randriamanjary with bikes and smartphones. These volunteers visit producers to provide advice on cultivation and animal husbandry. Though roads were closed to motor vehicles during the pandemic, Daniel and his colleagues were able to reach 2,100 farmers to offer advice and organize input deliveries and the sale of produce by smartphone.

David Santos Huancas ensures product traceability at the Allima Cacao agricultural cooperative which brings together 400 families of small farmers in the Amazonian area of Chazuta, Peru. He benefited from RPSF-funded training in business management, food safety and e-commerce.

In Fiji’s rural Sigatoka highlands, Filipe Baituwawa and other farmers in his community had to cultivate more diverse crops to feed themselves during the pandemic. PIRAS provided vegetable seeds, organic fertilizer and fencing so that he could grow fresh and highly nutritious vegetables, both to eat at home and to sell in the local market.