WFP South Sudan Smallholder Agriculture Market Support (June 2020)

BACKGROUND

Despite producing most of the world’s food, smallholder farmers tend to be food insecure themselves. Globally, they form the majority of people living in poverty. Helping raise their incomes and improve their livelihoods holds the key to building sustainable food systems, advancing food security and achieving Zero Hunger.Smallholder Agriculture Market Support (SAMS) complements other food assistance activities under Safety Nets and Resilience, especially the Food Assistance for Assets (FFA) and School Feeding programmes. SAMS evolved out of Purchase for Progress (P4P), a five-year pilot project that was implemented by the World Food Programme in 20 countries globally including South Sudan (2008-2013).

Through SAMS, WFP works with the Government of South Sudan and several cooperating partners to strengthen the capacity of smallholder farmers to improve food security through increased production, reduced food losses and enhanced access to quality-oriented markets, including WFP.

Overall, SAMS activities are structured around the Rural Aggregation Network model-temporary and permanent storage facilities, promoting collective aggregation and marketing for farmers in the catchment areas.

The assistance is delivered at three levels:

Household level support - to improve food and nutrition security

The assistance targets both FFA and non-FFA smallholder farmers, and mainly focuses on reducing food loss at household level through training in post-harvest handling and provision of post-harvest loss reduction technologies, such as tarpaulins and hermetic crop storage facilities (e.g. silos and bags).

Currently, between 15 and 50 percent of crops (cereals and pulses) are lost due to inappropriate storage facilities. Support at the household level helps farmers produce more high-quality crops, reduce post-harvest losses, improve gender equality, incomes and strengthen household nutrition.

WFP procurement - to create a stable demand

Through local procurement, WFP seeks to stimulate production and catalyze markets by buying directly from smallholder farmers. This creates an assured demand while working with private sector to create sustainable business relationships with the farmers. There is potential for South Sudan to reduce the annual cereal deficit of 450,000MT as of 2020, and reduce imports through increased production, improvement in quality and access to predictable quality-oriented markets.

Support to aggregators - Agribusiness Enterprises

WFP supports farmer organizations and other agri-business entities to build their capacity to provide services to their members and access quality-oriented markets. SAMS activities seek to strengthen their governance and agribusiness skills through training in business plan development, strengthening their governance, financial literacy and through facilitating linkages to financial services.