Global Communities’ Agriculture Development Sector strengthens the capacity of farmers and farmer groups, rural and urban poor, the food-insecure, and populations affected by conflict and natural disasters, enabling them to effectively pursue agricultural livelihoods and participate fully in market-based activities. We are sensitive to assisting women and the challenges they encounter.

We help smallholder farmers to first increase crop and animal production. In doing so, a surplus can be achieved. A surplus gives farmers a fighting chance to rise above mere subsistence. Smallholders are instructed in value-addition options, such as solar-drying of produce and milling of cereals into flour, so that these can be applied to surpluses to improve household incomes as well as to strengthen food security and foster resilience to shocks.

To assist with better access to markets, Global Communities employs an inclusive approach to help farmers with improvements in production, quality, standardization and relationships with value chain actors. Called our “Market Systems Approach,” we begin with a comprehensive assessment and work from there, building local capacity and identifying farmer leaders and agribusinesses. Services that we can provide include scaling-up agriculture operations; linking farmers to buyers and traders; improving access to market information; and facilitating horizontal partnerships with business development services, among others.

Improving access to financial products and services is extremely important for success in agriculture. Global Communities therefore facilitates the organizing of smallholders into Integrated Savings and Lending Groups (ISLGs) whereby financial and adult literacy classes are taught and effective money management skills are learned. ISLGs in particular allow women to engage more fully in micro-enterprises, and provide a formal track record appealing to lending institutions.

Using a gender sensitive lens, our initiatives improve nutrition by knowledge transfer of critical food groups, coupled with hands-on instruction in how to grow and prepare nutrition-rich foods for family consumption. Global Communities uses a variety approaches including Kitchen Gardens; peer nutrition counseling; exclusive breastfeeding and supplemental feeding emphasizing the “first one thousand days”; and instruction in sanitation and personal hygiene.

Our work in transitional agriculture development always begins with quality needs assessment and response that focuses on livelihoods protection and promotion, using a combination of food aid such as conditional food vouchers for asset restoration, and other cutting-edge interventions with a longer-term perspective that center on social protection mechanisms.

Global Communities’ Agriculture Development Sector offers technical services in several Focus Areas, described on the following pages:

Agriculture Development

Focus Area: Agriculture Production and Productivity Strengthening

Individual farmers struggle going it alone in the marketplace. Global Communities therefore intentionally brings smallholders together to increase their chances of success. We do so by using a three-pronged approach: 1) group development; 2) functional adult literacy; and 3) training in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP). Assisting farmers to organize into formal groups sets the stage for learning new practices and technologies, pooling resources and becoming cooperative enterprises. Cooperatives can empower their members to achieve greater market integration. Using proven instruction methods such as farmer field schools, demonstration plots and farmer exchange visits, we are able to transfer new information and build farmers’ capacities.

Focus Area: Increased Access to Markets

We promote market linkages based on the concept of inclusive value chains (VC), which places emphasis on identifying possible ways in which smallholder farmers can be incorporated into existing or new VCs or can extract greater value from the VC, either by increasing efficiency or by also carrying out activities further along the chain.

Global Communities has successfully increased market access within a variety of VCs, including teaching Liberian women entrepreneurs how to build and sustain agribusinesses, such as restaurants; facilitating women dairy and vegetable growers’ cooperatives in Mongolia to develop business plans and supply fresh produce and milk products for urban markets; and establishing a Loan Guarantee Facility in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi to increase access to financing for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) engaged in agribusinesses.

Focus Area: Improved Access to Agriculture Financial Services

Given the importance of financial services to the growth of agricultural livelihoods, Global Communities assists smallholders to gain access to financial resources by promoting savings and use of credit. We achieve this primarily by:

• Establishing Integrated Savings and Lending Groups (ISLGs);

• Providing basic skills training (functional/financial literacy, business development) to ISLGs, local NGOs and cooperatives; and

• Connecting ISLGs to larger Micro-Finance Institutions (MFI) and banks as well as agro-input lenders, agro-vets and buyers.

We facilitate linkages on both the demand and supply side: between ISLGs/cooperatives and MFIs/banks, along with capacity building of financial service providers on creating innovative lending products to small farmers. We introduce improving access to financial services to marginalized farmers via our successful Savings With Education training modules created for this very purpose.

Focus Area: Diversifying Food Consumption and Nutrition Education

We assist households to improve their knowledge of critical food groups as well as to cultivate and consume locally grown, nutritious foods. One of our teaching approaches, “Kitchen Garden”, promotes the diversification of diets and has met with tremendous success. Located adjacent to family homes, kitchen gardens are designed to raise awareness of and to encourage the eating of complementary foods. Using improved agricultural techniques, such as use of manure or waste water and planting certified seed, smallholders grow a variety of leafy, green vegetables and legumes. Our nutrition training includes topics such as exclusive breastfeeding; supplemental feeding emphasizing the “first one thousand days”; peer nutrition counseling; food preparation; raising and consuming small animals as a source of proteins; and hygiene. Training is conducted by agricultural extension agents, community health workers and community volunteers using a training-of-trainers method that allows learning and adoption of improved practices long after our programs have ended. We often employ cross-cutting behavioral change communication (BCC) approach that takes into consideration cultural and societal norms, particularly as it impacts women. We transfer nutrition training messages to target audiences through organized campaigns such as milk consumption, exclusive breastfeeding and radio outreach. Through these trainings we help demonstrate the relationship between agriculture, nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) activities.

Focus Area: Transitional Agriculture Development

Global Communities supports countries recovering from natural disasters or civil unrest that require rapid response initiatives. Our agriculture programs are designed to help reduce food aid dependency, improve household nutrition, provide additional income, help smooth household food availability during periods of conflict or disaster, and promote self-reliance. We strengthen the capacity of individuals, households or communities to cope with and withstand shocks affecting economic, social, health, political or the natural resource base. Field assessments help us determine whether transfers such as food assistance or vouchers are necessary to prevent suffering and protect development gains; and if so, how we can effectively deliver services without disrupting

local markets. Global Communities’ strategy often involves the use of food aid to vulnerable households, labor-based methods to reengage actors in their own recovery, and a focus on women. Program activities help re-establish agricultural production through provision of essential inputs such as seeds and tools; offer technical assistance on appropriate technologies such as urban gardens and rainwater harvesting; and in some cases deploy innovative electronic food voucher systems.

About Global Communities

Global Communities is an international non-profit organization that works closely with communities worldwide to bring about sustainable changes that improve the lives and livelihoods of the vulnerable. Development is not something we do for people; it is something we do with them. To learn more, please visit: www.globalcommunities.org

Global Communities has implemented agriculture programs in Azerbaijan, Colombia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Mongolia, Montenegro, Pakistan, Rwanda, Serbia, South Sudan, Syria, Uganda, West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.

For more information, contact:

Elizabeth Adams, Agriculture Technical Specialist

Global Communities 8601 Georgia Avenue, Suite 800 Silver Spring, MD 20910, USA

Email: eadams@globalcommunities.orgPhone: (+1) 301.587.4700