smallholder farmers

Lessons from the Field: How to Sustain Farmer Producer Organizations in India

CULTIVONS L’ESPRIT D’ENTREPRISE (CLE) is a Tanager-led effort to galvanize the entrepreneurial sector for youth in Burkina Faso working to give youth the knowledge and opportunities to allow them to dream big and create financial stability for themselves.

“Flexible and Specific”: Mary Devlin on best practices when training staff on sustainable sourcing

The trainings are largely based off of the Smallholder Agricultural Market Support (SAMS) Guidance, which Tanager helped the WFP to develop back in 2017. Like the guidance, the trainings are designed to be both flexible and specific: we can’t anticipate every situation in every country that could occur in the future, but we also know that if we just provide general statements then it’s not really good guidance. That being said, one of the main things we consider when preparing for a training is how much experience country offices have with smallholder programming, since we want to provide information that is both relevant and applicable. We’ve facilitated training sessions for both individual country offices as well as for regional bureaus.

Nurturing smallholder farmers in India

Today is National Farmers Day in India, an important time to reflect on the plight of the rural farmer and examine how Tanager is working to improve social and economic conditions in rural communities. In the Indian economy agricultural accounts for 18% of the country’s GDP, employing roughly 50% of the country’s workforce. In most of the cases farmers in India work less than an acre of land and rarely own more than 2 acres. These smallholder farmers face a unique set of challenges that Tanager works to address through our co-created projects in India. To understand how Tanager co-creates projects help to improve economic and social outcomes for these farmers, we must first understand the challenges of smallholder farming in India.

2019: A year of achievement and impact for the communities Tanager serves

2019 was a year of incredible achievement and impact for the people, communities, and businesses that Tanager works with across the globe. With activities that positively impact over 105 thousand people worldwide, Tanager’s work won multiple awards, we collaborated on leading industry reports on sustainable agriculture, increased women’s market inclusion across the continent of Africa, improved nutrition outcomes for households, and continued to be an industry leader in the field of sustainable agriculture.

SDGs through the eyes of a farming household

For much of the world, the real face of poverty is a smallholder farmer. According to the FAO, of the 2.5 billion people living directly from food or agriculture sectors in poor countries, 1.5 billion of them are smallholder farmers, with about 65% of those living in extreme poverty and over 50% being classified as moderate poor (1). Recent SDG 1 projections indicate that 6% of the world’s population will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030 if current trends continue.

How do we bridge the gap towards achieving an end to poverty?