Food Coalition

ACT, ACCELERATE, TRANSFORM

Countries involved

  •  Ghana
  •  Italy
  •  Norway
  •  United States of America

National institutions

  • Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies (Italy) 
  • Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Italy) 
  • United States Department of Agriculture (USA) 
  • Ghana Central Regional Coordinating Council - Department of Food and Agriculture (Ghana)

Non-state actors

  • Coldiretti Fondazione Campagna Amica (Italy)
  • Centro Studi Divulga (Italy)
  • Farmers Market Coalition (USA)
  • Bondens Marked (Norway)
  • Central Regional Apex Farmers Association (CRAFA, Ghana)

Time frame

2021-2026

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting disruptions to food supply chains have underscored the importance of diverse agrifood systems to ensure food and nutrition security and enhance their resilience and equity. Direct-to-consumer markets can be an important contribution to these goals, as they can help increasing the farmers' share of the food dollar and improving consumers' access to affordable, high-quality products. Farmers' markets provide an important outlet for direct-to-consumer sales and can help catalyzing new entrepreneurial opportunities while supporting small and new producers. 

As different models of farmers' markets exist, it becomes crucial to document and understand them and identify influencing factors that may determine the outcome of each model for informing decision-making processes and development programmes at different levels. 

 

 

Objective

Supporting small-scale farmers for inclusive and sustainable agrifood systems

The project aims at promoting diverse farmers’ market models and collective mechanisms to engage small-scale producers in sustainable agrifood systems as agents of economic, social and environmental sustainability.To reach this objective, the project will work on developing a worldwide network of farmers’ markets while providing support to farmers and their representative organisations in the form of capacity development programmes. Support will also be provided to countries and institutions for the promotion of an enabling policy, legislative and institutional environment for farmers’ markets to operate, through policy dialogue initiatives and review of regulatory and institutional frameworks. Moreover, progress, knowledge and best practices and their impacts will be monitored, analysed and compiled in a global report to share the learning and give visibility to the importance of farmers' markets in inclusive and sustainable transformation of agrifood systems.

Activities

  • Creation of a platform and network on farmers’ markets for dialogue among stakeholders, knowledge exchange and dissemination, and on-line training.
  • Development and implementation of an advocacy and outreach strategy for connecting with different stakeholders and farmers’ markets.
  • Mapping of existing farmers’ markets models and good practices.
  • Review and analysis of relevant legal and institutional framework and support to policy dialogue and policy development.
  • Appraisal of collective mechanisms, organizational capacities, and capacity needs.
  • Capacity development programmes for farmers and associations.
  • Data gathering, synthesis, documentation and dissemination of results through a global report and advocacy events.

Contributing to

FAO “4 Betters” Strategic Framework

Better Life

Better Production

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG1SDG2SDG3SDG8SDG10SDG11SDG12SDG13