Ken Davies, P4P Coordinator and David Stevenson, Head of Policy, Planning and Strategy

Copyright: WFP/Photlibrary

“I remember one day asking a farmer how he would normally sell his crops, he told me that he would just wait until someone would come to his village to buy them,” says Margot van der Velden, WFP’s Deputy Country Director in Mozambique.

Offering market opportunities for farmers to sell their crops is at the core of Purchase for Progress (P4P) – a project launched by WFP in September 2008.

Hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers across the developing world are permanently uncertain about their harvest. Even when they get good yields, they are not sure if they will be able to sell their crops and for what price.

P4P offers support to overcome such uncertainty. Different ways are being tried depending on the local reality of each of the 21 pilot countries involved.

55 WFP staff members from 20 countries, regional bureaus and headquarters met on the 8th of December in Rome for the first day of the P4P Annual Review meeting to debate how the project is achieving its objectives and to share experiences on how to better support smallholder farmers.

“Farmers have a real desire and spirit to want to improve their condition through producing something,” said Stanlake Samkange, WFP Country Director in Uganda. “One of our targets in Uganda is to transform former internally displaced people, who until recently received our assistance, from net recipients of food to net producers. It is very rewarding to see this happening right in front of our eyes and to see how they feel encouraged about doing something for themselves.”

Ramiro Lopes da Silva, Deputy COO explains what has been discussed during the first day of the meeting.

On 9 and 10 December WFP staff will be joined by representatives of a wide range of partners, donors and other stakeholder to continue building a solid base of knowledge and sharing experience on how best to assist smallholder farmers to become competitive players in the market place.