Connecting farmers to markets

As the world’s largest humanitarian agency, WFP is a major buyer of staple food. In 2012, WFP bought US$1.1 billion worth of food – more than 75 percent of this in developing countries. With the Purchase the Progress (P4P) initiative, WFP is taking this one step further. P4P uses WFP’s purchasing power and its expertise in logistics and food quality to offer smallholder farmers opportunities to access agricultural markets, to become competitive players in those markets and thus to improve their lives.

The five-year pilot initiative links WFP’s demand for staple food in 20 countries with the expertise of a host of partners who support farmers to produce food surpluses and sell them at a fair price. By 2013, at least half a million smallholder farmers will have increased and improved their agricultural production and earnings. By raising farmers’ incomes, P4P turns WFP’s local procurement into a vital tool to address hunger.  Learn more

P4P latest

DRC: In Equateur’s Forests, P4P Helps To Build A Generation Of Model Farmers

A year after the start of the Purchase for Progress (P4P) pilot in DRC’s Equateur province, thousands of participating farmers say they have experienced real change in the way they work and also in their daily lives.

South Sudan: Farmers Learn To View Agriculture As Business

South Sudan’s huge agricultural potential remains largely untapped. By teaming up with partners, the P4P initiative is helping smallholder farmers develop business skills and tap into this potential.

Sierra Leone – Farmers Progress In Times Of Peace

Aiah Fundowa is a happy man – his farmers’ organisation Bassankoe is able to sell more and more rice each year they take part in P4P. The challenges that remain for their organisation are still numerous, but the smallholders in the conflict-ridden West African nation are optimistic  that their future in agriculture is bright.

Ethiopia - School meals supplied by local farmers

Markos and Elias have received school meals from WFP for the past two years, but the lunch they ate one day in November was special. The food WFP distributed was not shipped from overseas, or even from other countries in the region. For the first time ever, the students enjoyed a meal made from crops grown just a few kilometers from their school - purchased by WFP directly from Ethiopian farmers.