World Food Day Action Countdown: Highlight empowered small farmers!

October 10th, 2009 at 9:00 am

Earn 500 OCC points every day you participate in the World Food Programme’s “Action a Day” series. If you complete all 16 actions, you can get an additional 2,500 points. Submit your actions for points here.

-Emily

The World Food Programme is calling on you to take action in the days counting down to World Food Day, October 16. Each day we will issue a daily challenge as part of our Billion for a Billion campaign.

Action: Share the video below of Purchase for Progress with your friends.

You can share the video here.

Recently in New York, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the Obama Administration’s commitment to combat hunger worldwide, stressing a comprehensive approach to food security to ensure critical emergency needs are met while addressing the “underlying causes of hunger”. Reaching out to women farmers is a critical part of their plan.

The World Food Programme has been working to empower women and small farmers through an innovative program called Purchase for Progress or P4P: we buy food from local farmers to feed the hungry in the same country.

Linda Jacinto, a farmer from Mozambique, sold beans to the program this year through a cooperative that works with farmers’ associations in Nampula and P4P. Linda says the program is a real incentive to increase her production of beans so she can sell more. She used the money to buy corrugated iron to rebuild the roof of her home. Next on her shopping list is concrete to strengthen the walls, and then a motorbike for transport.

Most Mozambicans are semi-subsistence farmers who live below the poverty line. They face a host of obstacles from poor storage to a lack of access to markets and market information. Purchase for Progress empowers farmers by giving them access to markets and a guaranteed buyer for their surplus food — a major incentive for farmers to invest in their farms.

This increases both the quantity and quality of their harvests, and ensures food will be available for the lean times of the year. Community ownership is crucial to the program’s success, and working together at the grassroots allows communities to increase their production and productivity. It also improves food security, while providing locally grown maize and beans for food assistance programs in Mozambique.