Agricultural Support Services Project

Agricultural Support Services Project

The successful agrarian reform created a large number of privatized farms, but did not eliminate poverty. About 75 per cent of the families on the 140,000 privatized farms targeted by the project are poor.

Small-scale farmers have no access to basic inputs and services, such as seeds, fertilizer, machinery services, market information and credit. They lack the farming and business skills to manage their farms and market their products. The project helps them overcome these and other constraints.

To raise household incomes and alleviate poverty the project focuses on agricultural productivity, profitability, incentives framework and sustainability. The objective is to improve the development and operation of market-oriented support services that assist farmers with agronomic and management advice, with market information and with animal nutrition, health care and breeding. The project works with the government and other partners to assist resource-poor farmers and farmers’ groups by:

• accelerating the process of agrarian reform and farm restructuring
• providing advisory services to emerging farmers
• improving access to rural credit
• improving the availability of quality seed
• supporting measures for crop protection and plant quarantine
• establishing an agricultural market information system
• strengthening national agricultural management capacity

The project has introduced learning-based advisory services across the country, which are integrated with the livestock advisory services introduced under the earlier IFAD-funded Sheep Development Project. The project not only provides advisory services but also supplements them with small loans for particularly disadvantaged households. The network of rural advisory services created under the projects has evolved into a community-driven extension system.

Participation is a key objective, and the project assists farmers in organizing user groups and associations. Through strategic alliances with major donors, international research organizations, government agencies and NGOs, IFAD promotes the responsiveness of these organizations to the needs of poor rural people.

Source: IFAD