Participants shall now be able to develop their own business plans

70 farmer association leaders, managers of agricultural production and technicians from the District Services for Economic Activities (SDAE) and the District Services for Education, Youth and Technology (SDEJT) of the Province of Tete, central Mozambique, are now qualified to develop their own production and trading plans. This was the main result of the trainings carried out at the end of May by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the non-governmental organization World Vision in the districts of Cahora Bassa and Changara.

According to FAO's technician and one of the training facilitators, Domingos Ajuda, it is important that the farmers know how to develop a business plan, since this will help them determine the price of their surplus according to production prices. "This allows them to make more adequate decisions regarding crop choices, it allows them to quantify the production volume and, thus, the necessary inputs, avoiding waste. And it helps them set the budget for the production of a specific crop and make the viability analysis of their production."

The trainings in Tete have been carried out within the Purchase from Africans for Africa (PAA Africa) programme, in which FAO has worked since 2012 in partnership with WFP, the Government of Brazil and UK's  Department for International Development (DFID). According to Alfredo Novela, a technician at WFP, the farmers covered by the programme have already attended several trainings, "some of them on gender in agriculture, others on sanitary handling of traction animals, good governance within associations and local procurement of farming surplus".

In Mozambique, the pilot-project of PAA Africa is being implemented in the districts of Angónia, Changara and Cahora Bassa, in Tete Province, where FAO is providing technical assistance to farmers in order to increase agricultural production and productivity and, in a first phase, provide food to local schools. "The food the schools receive from the farmers' fields is purchased through the modality of local food purchases by the schools", said Basílio Isaque, a technician at the School Food and Production Programme at the Provincial Directorate of Education and Human Development of Tete. "The purchase of food from the farmers' associations and that from the school gardens assisted by PAA Africa has increased the food availability in schools and thus improved the children's nutrition."

With these trainings, the participants shall now develop their business planning and management capacity and acquire knowledge that will support them in decision-making regarding their business. "We have learned new organization techniques and this helps us increase our productivity. Now we know what to do to improve our production", said Baduelo Piasse Mahaus, the president of the farmers' association of Chibuerano, in Cahora Bassa, who attended the training in that district.

PAA Africa, inspired by the Brazilian programme of local food purchase (PAA), is being implemented in five African countries, namely Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, and Senegal and aims to support family farmers to better access local markets, ensuring, on the one hand, the demand for their products and, on the other, a source of food for local schools.