Suiting the action to the word
Activity report 2008

• Prologue
• Introduction
• I Farmers Fighting Poverty: Funding & Expenditure
• II Projects: the building blocks
• III Advisory services
• IV Achievements
• V Agriterra in 2008
• VI Conclusions and recommendations
• Supplement
• Annexes
• Download Activity Report 2008

Introduction

The present document is the second yearly report on the implementation of the programme Farmers Fighting Poverty (FFP) that runs from 2007-2010. Agriterra is the coordinating agency for the grant obtained from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS) to implement this programme. As such this report gives an overview of the results of the activities of all agri-agencies and at times highlights specific activities and developments within Agriterra.

The point of departure for the report is the monitoring protocol (see annex 1) that has been agreed upon with the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS) as a framework for organising and presenting the information on activities and achieved results during this period. That being said, the report will not refer exclusively to the activities made possible by the DGIS grant, but will encompass the entire programme, including the activities financed by other back donors. A detailed description of the organisation and management of Farmers Fighting Poverty can be found in the activity report of 2007. In the following chapters and paragraphs we will mainly focus on the activities implemented during 2008 and their results.

The fundamental goal of the programme is to strengthen producer organisations to enable them to fully and satisfactorily contribute to (rural) economic development, equality and democracy. Farmers Fighting Poverty is not an Agriterra affair: it is the joint endeavour of the agri-agencies that together form AgriCord.

In Chapter I we explain how we obtained the funds to carry out Farmers Fighting Poverty and how we spent those funds. The main services of agri-agencies to those clients are funding (through projects) and advice. These services come together in the projects that are proposed by the farmers’ organisations.

Chapter II deals with the projects in more detail. We explain the work of the AgriCord Project committee. Besides presenting the expenditures we will also look at the number, the geographical distribution and the level of action (intervention level) of the projects. We exemplify our efforts with the so-called micro-projects. Subsequently, we explain the management of the work areas. All projects are grouped in nineteen work areas. These areas can be seen as main fields of action of farmers’ organisations. We analyse activities along the lines of those categories. Each project is funded from and therefore linked to one work area. Each area has a manager (see Annex 2 for an overview).

More specifics on the advisory services offered by the agri-agencies are presented in Chapter III. First we discuss developments in the management of these services, followed by a paragraph that explains who were our clients in 2008, and one that classifies and describes different types of missions and discusses their effect. In this chapter we also refer to our grass-roots connections from farmer-to-farmer and the strategic alliances with SNV and Agri-ProFocus.

Strengthened farmers’ organisations is what we strive for, and this is measured by profilings. So, to recur to our results, the outcomes of these profilings are being presented in Chapter IV. Besides profilings, there are other ways in which we measure what the result has been of all our efforts. The impact of our work also becomes clear in facts and figures on outreach and women participation, and through the stories we gathered and the evaluations we did.

Chapter IV also presents results we achieved together with two important institutions: IFDC and IFAP. IFDC is an important partner in the implementation of the 1000s to millions programme that promotes agri-business clusters.

The interlinkage between Farmers Fighting Poverty and IFAP’s recommendations to fight rural poverty is explicit. In our programme we state that our activities contribute to IFAP’s recommendations. Chapter IV shows to which extent we did so in 2008 and we also review IFAP’s performance in two projects it implemented.

After this we take a little side-turn into Agriterra’s internal organisation. After reviewing our year plan on 2008, we discuss the quality and efficiency of our work in Chapter V.

Having discussed all activities, results and outcomes, in Chapter VI the main conclusions on 2008 are presented and recommendations are given for the years of Farmers Fighting Poverty to come.

Throughout the report you will find examples of the reports on projects, the special services (= the advisory work) and the stories that were collected in the field.