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Catalyzing positive impact for smallholder farming communities requires engagement with the full range of participants in local agricultural value chains – not just the farmers themselves. Heifer’s role is to facilitate interlinkages among market actors and enablers who can create the conditions for sustainable economic opportunity for farmers.
Rather than relegate farmers to selling their product in low-value informal markets, we work with locally active offtakers, aggregators, processors and others who can offer farmers more lucrative and reliable sales opportunities.
In Edo State in Nigeria, smallholder chicken farmers were hundreds of miles away from nearest offtakers and processors, limiting potential returns. We engaged Amo Farms to help establish a local processing plant that can be a game-changer for these mostly women farmers.
Heifer both helps farmers form cooperatives and works with existing cooperatives and other types of farmer producer organizations (FPOs) to increase their farmers’ productivity as well as the quality and marketability of their farm products.
In Guatemala’s Alta Verapaz region, Heifer’s Green Business Belt program engaged the existing women-run ADIRA cooperative to help them move into value-added products made from the cacao they grow. The ADIRA members are now manufacturing chocolate bars and other goods that capture more value for the women.
Extension services are typically the most concrete link farmers have to government support services. We work closely with these services to integrate best practices, techniques and knowledge.
In Ecuador Heifer has trained more than 16,000 government extension agents nationwide in providing knowledge about better child and family care, nutrition and responsible consumption to complete.
The majority of the farmers we work with are women – they were 64 percent of the 9.4 million people who received training from Heifer between 2012 and 2022. We support women’s empowerment through support for collective action by women.
In Rwanda’s Kayonza district, women formed a group called Urumuri (the light) that received support from Heifer. The women established a livestock farmer field school in which they could receive practical training, as well as training in cooperative management, nutrition and financial management.
Achieving buy-in from local governments is key to achieving scale and sustainability for projects. Governments are able to marshal broad-based support as well as help integrate positive practices into government programs for broadened impact.
In Nepal, Heifer has formed 51 partnerships with local governments since 2019 as part of a cost-sharing model which has generated more than $14 million in official commitments to Heifer-supported initiatives to date – reflection of governments’ confidence in Heifer’s sustainable locally led development model.
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