Shiyan Smallholder Agribusiness Development Project

This project's goal is to sustainably reduce poverty and improve livelihoods for small farmers involved in agricultural value chains in the target areas. Its specific objectives are to empower the rural poor to participate in commercial farming and to increase farm family incomes while decreasing income variability.

Project components include:

• Strengthening value chains to improve value-addition and access to markets and rural financial services for smallholders; this will be achieved through institutional development and capacity-building for cooperatives, support for public-private partnerships and establishment of a guarantee facility for pro-poor value chain financing.
• Enhancing commercial farming to raise smallholder incomes through household-level commercial production of high-value crops and livestock; this will require a shift from subsistence farming to market-oriented agricultural production.

The project's support to commercial crop production will include provision of seeds, seedlings and fertilizers. The production of commercial crops will provide additional income for farmers through increased yields and productivity, and higher prices. Improved market access will be achieved through cooperative marketing. Production activities will also be tied to infrastructure improvement.

In line with IFAD's targeting strategy and the government's poverty reduction priorities, small farmers with economic potential in five counties of Shiyan Prefecture and three districts of Shiyan city have been selected to implement the project.