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The GAFSP’s Missing Middle Initiative (MMI) is designed to stimulate greater investment along agricultural value chains and to reach small-scale farmers more directly. The Sara Bangla Krishak Society in Bangladesh, a partner in the MMI since 2018, comprises mostly small, marginal and landless farmers living in remote communities. Access to markets and financial and technical services is often patchy.

Thanks to MMI grant funding, three producer organizations of the Sara Bangla Krishak Society developed a business plan using FAO’s RuralInvest toolkit to establish a feed production unit, invest in collective fishing material and set up a revolving loan fund to buy inputs.

This relatively small investment is now having a big ripple effect along the supply chain. In 2022, these three organizations developed a new business plan and invested USD 50 000 of their own money to set up a fish hatchery. The hatchery now sells carp fish larvae to 350 producers who rear them in nursery ponds to the fingerling stage. Each fingerling producer then sells to around 20 fingerling traders who in turn each sell to about ten fish farmers.

Building on the experience with the MMI pilot projects, the GAFSP introduced a new funding track in 2021 offering small grants for producer organizations to design, lead and implement their priority projects – effectively putting producer organizations in the driver’s seat.