Smallholder farmers and their rural communities are a major part of the solution to food security and poverty (IFAD)

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http://ifad-un.blogspot.com/2010/11/farming-as-business-not-mirage-but.html

Farming as a business: not a mirage, but a reality

By Moses Abukari, Daniela Cuneo and Roxanna Samii

One of the highlights of 2010 West and Central Africa regional implementation workshops was the field trip. While we were sorry that we could not visit an IFAD-funded project and programme, we were excited to visit the modern village farm of Djilakh – government financed activity covering the entire agricultural, production and marketing value chain.

We had an early wake up call, with departure scheduled for 8:00am. Two buses made their way through Dakar’s heavy early morning traffic. Two hours later we reached “Ferme villageois Aoderme de Djilakh”.

At IFAD, we talk about farming, regardless of size or scale, as a business, and smallholder farmers as small-scale business owner rather than poor rural people. There is now a growing recognition and understanding that smallholder farmers and their rural communities are a major part of the solution to food security and poverty. As development workers, our goal is to help smallholder farmers go beyond subsistence farming and help them turn farming into a viable business.

The Djilakh farmers we met personified the concept of farmers as small-scale business owners and farming as a business.

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