المعرفة

​Smallholder farmers use different strategies to improve their market presence and to capture more value added in the agricultural sector. These strategies include the creation of cooperatives and other farmers’ organizations (FOs).

This “Lessons Learned” document of the conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa toolkit reviews experiences over the last two decades.

Conservation agriculture (CA) in sub-Saharan Africa has multiple, but often very specific, niches for investment that need to be understood to support its inclusion and implementation in projects.

This “How To Do” note offers guidance on the design, implementation and scaling up of a CA programme or project in sub-Saharan Africa. It begins with a summary of the key issues and associated questions  and follows this with lessons gained from experience.

​Smallholder farmers use different strategies to improve their market presence and to capture more value added in the agricultural sector. These strategies include the creation of cooperatives and other farmers’ organizations (FOs).

The business plan of an FO is a document providing information on how the FO intends to organize and implement activities so that it is profitable and can succeed. It is an essential tool for the planning, managing and running of a business. It clarifies the operational and financial objectives of a business and contains the detailed plans and budgets showing how the objectives are to be achieved. It may also contain background information about the organization that is attempting to reach those goals.

IFAD is unique in being both an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency. It is also unique in mandate – the only institution exclusively dedicated to eradicating hunger and poverty in rural areas of developing countries. IFAD provides low-interest loans and grants to developing countries to finance innovative agricultural and rural development programmes and projects, and is among the top multilateral institutions working in agriculture in Africa. The decision to create IFAD was made in 1974, in the wake of the great droughts and famines that struck Africa and Asia in the preceding years. At the 1974 World Food Conference, world leaders agreed that “an international fund … should be established immediately to finance agricultural development projects”.