Purchase for Progress (P4P) is a groundbreaking initiative to transform the way the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) purchases food in developing countries.

It aims to give small-scale farmers access to reliable markets and the opportunity to sell their surplus at competitive prices. “It’s a win-win,” says WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran. “We help our beneficiaries who have little or no food and we help local farmers who have little or no access to markets.”

Josette Sheeran, in Ghana, explains how P4P will help fight hunger across Africa

Purchasing food in the country where we have operations has been a WFP policy for many years. It's called 'local procurement'. In 2008, WFP will spend up to US$ 1 billion buying food from developing countries to assist 90 million hungry people worldwide.

P4P builds on local procurement and takes it a step further. It enables smallholder and low-income farmers to supply food to WFP’s global operations and to gain more by doing so.

P4P will give farmers the know-how and the tools to be competitive players in the agricultural marketplace. It will also put more cash directly into their pockets in return for their crops.
The majority of the world’s poorest people live in rural areas and most rely on farming for food and income. By helping hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers gain access to reliable markets to sell their surplus crops at competitive prices, P4P bolsters fragile local economies.

Small farmers need secure markets for any surpluses they can produce. WFP will put in place new methods to purchase food and help reduce the risks they face. They include purchasing directly from farmers’ associations, using forward contracting and ensuring farmers get a fair payment for their produce.

P4P relies on a collective effort by governments, international agencies, the private sector and others key players. Partners specialized in enhancing agricultural productivity will help small-scale farmers to produce more food than their families need.

P4P initiatives will be piloted in up to 21 countries over the next five years.

The countries in the P4P pilot include:

• Africa: Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia
• Latin America: Guatemala and Nicaragua
• Asia: Afghanistan and Laos

The food WFP buys from farmers will go to feed hungry people in the same country. Thus P4P creates a win-win solution for developing countries. In the first year, WFP expects to purchase 40,000 tons of food – enough to feed 250,000 people for a year - through the innovative methods launched by P4P.

P4P should provide substantial gains for at least 350,000 farmers in the pilot countries alone.

The project will also identify and rigorously test practices that can be used to benefit small-scale farmers in other countries.

Ultimately, the intention is to support farmers to capitalize not only on the market offered by WFP, but also to connect farmers to other local and regional food markets.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation have committed US$75 million to P4P. The Belgian Government has provided funds for the inclusion of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WFP cannot do this alone. Its success depends on a network of partners in which public-private partnerships, such as the one with the foundations, are a key element.

Governments are pivotal since the cash to pay for the local procurement of food comes from ongoing donor contributions to WFP’s regular operations. But so too are agricultural traders and agro-input suppliers.

P4P also requires a collective effort from the UN agencies, the World Bank Group and NGO partners working with farming communities to enhance crop management capacities and marketing skills. Host governments develop the overall strategy for the agricultural sector while leading the investment drive to improve both agricultural production and rural infrastructure.