Farm to Market Alliance awarded grant by  The Norwegian Government.

Farm to Market Alliance is proud to announce that The Norwegian Government will continue its support with a commitment of NOK 150 million (USD 17 million) over three years. This grant will help ensure that agricultural markets work better for hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. The alliance plans to engage nearly 600,000 smallholder farmers and over 3,000 agricultural SME’s in profitable food value chains; lifting their incomes and making them and the value chain sustainable and commercially viable.

The Farm to Market Alliance is a unique alliance of six organizations, collaborating to develop a sustainable and profitable agricultural sector in Africa. It does so by addressing the major challenges smallholder farmers face, supporting their transition to commercial agriculture.

The Farm to Market Alliance works to build resilient and predictable value chains by bringing together the public and private sectors to leverage the knowledge, experience and infrastructure of the world’s leading experts in agriculture. The Alliance’s global members are The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Bayer, Rabobank, Syngenta Crop Protection, Yara and the World Food Programme (WFP).
Africa is recognized as the future breadbasket of the world, but the continent is still a net-importer of food. The Farm to Market Alliance’s mission is to develop a sustainable and profitable agricultural sector in Africa.

For too long, farmers in Africa have been subject to a range of barriers preventing them from transitioning to commercial farming. To address this, the Farm to Market Alliance takes a demand-led approach in servicing smallholder farmers and the surrounding ecosystem thus providing a holistic value chain solution.

“The private sector has a critical role to play in the worldwide movement to end hunger – we will never achieve our goal without their support. The Farm to Market Alliance is a unique collaboration that supports the growth of agricultural markets and works with smallholder farmers to help them find buyers for their produce – enabling them to earn a sustainable living and support their families.” says Executive Director of the World Food Programme, David Beasley.

The announcement of continued funding to the Farm to Market Alliance comes at a time when access to food is deteriorating for millions of people, threatening both food security and peace in vulnerable regions.

“In the middle of the Covid crisis we are also facing a hunger crisis. We must rebuild more resilient and fair food systems after the pandemic, and the Farm to Market Alliance is uniquely positioned to help us achieve that goal,” says Yara’s President & CEO, Svein Tore Holsether.

“At Bayer, we want to empower more than a 100 million smallholder farmers around the world by improving access to agronomic knowledge, resources and innovative solutions” said Liam Condon, President of the Crop Science Division at Bayer. “Building resilient food value chains to support smallholder farmers require collaborative partnerships such as the Farm to Market Alliance, which we are proud to support.”

“AGRA is pleased to to see this opportunity to leverage the FTMA partnership to support hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers in their critical journey to food and agricultural transformation. Building back better with the compounded challenges of COVID, locusts and increasing weather variability requires continued synergies between public and private partners to innovate and reach the last mile with practical solutions for improving rural communities’ livelihoods in Africa.” Dr. Agnes Kalibata, President AGRA

“Smallholders have a crucial role to play in food security as 45% of global food production is produced by smallholder farmers. At the same time, their yield potential is still over 400%. The collaboration and commitment of private and public sector in Farmer to Market Alliance can boost smallholders’ livelihoods and create resilient sustainable food systems in emerging markets, with digitization being an important enabler to reach the required scale” Wiebe Draijer, Chairman of Managing Board, Rabobank

“Supporting farmers in developing countries to successfully grow crops and link them to markets is critical for lifting them and their countries out of poverty and being able to feed themselves. This is more important than ever in the face of Covid-19, increasing climate change driven weather extremes and pests that destroy crops like locusts and fallarmy worm. Agriculture is a major contributor to the economies of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. The Farm to Market Alliance plays a key role in helping drive inclusive and sustainable growth in these countries.” Syngenta Group CEO, Erik Fyrwald

The alliance members look forward to the continued work and strengthening their relationships in order to achieve the goals of the alliance: to make markets work for farmers.

Press release from the Norwegian government can be found here. (NB in Norwegian).