Farmer to Farmer

Farmer-to-Farmer (F2F) is a program of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The program provides for the transfer of knowledge and expertise from U.S. volunteers to farmers, farm groups, and agribusinesses in developing and transitional countries.

Legal authority

The Farmer-to-Farmer Program was initially funded in 1985 under Title V of Public Law 480 of the U.S. Farm Bill. The U.S. Congress authorized the current phase of the F2F Program (covering fiscal years 2009 through 2013) in the 2008 Farm Bill, designating it the "John Ogonowski and Doug Bereuter F2F Program". John Ogonowski was the pilot of one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; the project was renamed the John Ogonowski Farmer to Farmer Program to honor his extensive work with immigrant Southeast Asian farmers using his land in rural Massachusetts. Former Congressman Bereuter was the initial sponsor of the program.^[1]

Initiated as a P.L. 480-funded pilot project and authorized first under the Food Security Act of 1985 (P.L. 99-198), the program taps U.S. agricultural expertise to provide technical assistance to farmers in developing, middle income, and emerging market countries. The 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) extends funding authority through FY2007 and requires that no less than 0.5% of P.L. 480 funds be used for the program.

The Farmer to Farmer Program was reauthorized in the current Farm Bill, known as the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008.

CNFA staff Nick Richie and Esborne Baraza speak to rice farmers at the Ahero rice project, 2005

Volunteers

The program relies on the expertise of volunteers from U.S. farms, land grant universities, cooperatives, private agribusinesses, and nonprofit farm organizations to respond to the local needs of host-country farmers and organizations. Volunteers are recruited from all fifty states and the District of Columbia. In general, these volunteers are not overseas development professionals, but rather individuals who have domestic careers, farms, and agribusinesses, or are retired persons who want to participate in development efforts. Typically volunteers spend about 20 to 30 days in the host country.

Results

Program evaluations have consistently found that the program provides high-quality services from volunteers, leveraging over $34 million worth of volunteer time contributions to development efforts. Approximately one million farmer families (representing about five million people) have been direct beneficiaries of the F2F Program. Volunteers help host individuals and organizations build local institutions and linkages to resolve local problems and have provided direct hands-on training to over 80,000 people. Since program initiation, over 12,000 volunteer assignments have been completed in over 80 countries. Approximately 19% of all volunteers are women and about 39% of all individuals trained by F2F volunteers are women.^[2]

Current program

In September 2013, USAID signed cooperative agreements with the following institutions for the provision of F2F Program volunteer services for international agricultural development. From 2014 to 2018, the program will operate in approximately 22 core countries, providing nearly 3,000 volunteer technical assistance assignments averaging three weeks duration. The Farmer to Farmer Program implementing organizations will work closely with overseas USAID missions and partner organizations, supporting a variety of development programs aimed at reducing poverty and stimulating sustainable and broad-based economic growth.

Onion Harvest on a 2004 CNFA Farmer to farmer Project in Moldova

Core Country projects

The core Farmer-to-Farmer programs are implemented under LWA Cooperative Agreements. Each Agreement funds core country Farmer-to-Farmer programs in a defined geographic region, but also allows for global access for Associate Awards using voluntary technical assistance in agricultural development. The capabilities statements for the LWA holders can be downloaded:

ACDI/VOCA – core country programs in West Africa and in Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia; Contact – Angelina Tracy
Catholic Relief Services – core country programs in East Africa; Contact – Bruce White

   CNFA – core country programs in Southern Africa; Contact - Scott Clark
   Land O’Lakes – core country programs in the Middle East and North Africa; Contact – Dean Smith
   Partners of the Americas – core country programs in the Caribbean Basin; Contact – Peggy Carlson
   Winrock International – core country programs in Asia and in West Africa agricultural education and training; Contact - Nona Fisher
   Volunteers for Economic Growth Alliance – Special Program Support Project (SPSP); Contact – Eric Wallace

Farmer-to-Farmer includes a Special Program Support Project (SPSP) to test innovative approaches for use of volunteers, draw from non-traditional volunteer sources, develop capacity of non-traditional volunteer organizations, and address niche agricultural sector problems. Special projects will be implemented by voluntary technical assistance organizations as sub-awards.

Eligible countries

The 2013 USAID RFA designated the following countries as eligible for Farmer to Farmer Programs:

Caribbean Basin

Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

East Africa

Rwanda, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Congo, Comoros, Djibouti, Seychelles

Southern Africa

Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland

West Africa

Malia, Ghana, Liberia, DRC, Guinea, Nigeria, Senegal, Guinea, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Burundi, Cape Verde, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Niger, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Togo

Asia

Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, India, Mongolia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam

Middle East and North Africa

West Bank and Gaza, Yemen, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco

Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia

Kosovo, Serbia, Ukraine, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

Latin America

Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 6/13/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.