Family farmers produce food for a rapidly growing and increasing urban population. How can farmer entrepreneurs improve their income and well-being through effective collective action? Join this course and take home many practical tools and approaches for promoting farmer entrepreneurship and strengthening farmers’ organisations.
The course is about designing and facilitating farmer-inclusive development. Key elements are:
- Realities of smallholder farmers
- Governance, management and performance of farmers’ organisations
- Value chain analysis
- Improved stakeholder collaboration
- A more enabling environment for farmer-inclusive development.
Don’t miss the opportunity to become a facilitator knowing how to bring about effective collective action of farmers’ organisations.
What will you learn?
Upon completion of the course you will:
- To interpret farmer entrepreneurship in their own context;
- To use methods and tools for farmer-inclusive agro-economic development;
- To profile farmers to reveal their diversity and tailor interventions;
- To assess the governance, management and performance of farmers’ organisations;
- To analyse an agro-economic system including value chain and stakeholder mapping;
- To strategize for improving farmers’ relations with other stakeholders, such as sourcing companies, financial institutions, research, extension and others;
- To plan and accompany the development of agribusiness cases piloted by farmers and their organisations.
Course programme in more detail
Family farms constitute the majority of the world’s small and medium enterprises. Ninety percent of all farms worldwide are family farms, mostly smallholders. These 500 million family farms represent one third of the world population, and provide 80% of the world’s food. Family farms are and will remain crucial for food availability and nutrition security. Family farms are small enterprises and make up the largest part of the private sector. However, the habit to treat farmers as target groups or beneficiaries of development programs is persistent. Government, company and donor efforts to listen to, and learn from farmers are still limited. As a result, farmers are still only partially involved in the design and implementation of rural development programmes.
How to register:
For who is this course?
Are you eager to promote farmer inclusion? If so, then this three-week course, emphasising farmer entrepreneurship and collective action, is for you. We welcome professionals from farmers’ organisations, governmental organisations, private sector, civil society organisations, universities, research and extension from different regions of the world. Proficiency in English is required.
To register, please visit the following link.
The Application Procedure
- Register for the course of your interest by clicking the ‘apply’ button on the webpage of this course. A registration form will open;
- Fill in the required fields of the registration form. Please note to write your date of birth without a zero (e.g. 1-5-1980 instead of 01-05-1980);
- Before you submit, check your details on the final page of the registration form;
- After submitting, you will receive a confirmation email. Make sure to directly click on the link in the email to confirm your registration. Without your confirmation, your registration cannot be processed;
- If you apply as an OKP or MSP-scholarship candidate, you will receive a registration letter for the scholarship at the beginning of the scholarship cycle.
- If you apply as a self-funded participant: we will forward your request for acceptance to the course leader. This can take some time as it depends on the coordinators' schedule (1-3 weeks);
- If you’re accepted into the course programme, we’ll send you an admission letter by e-mail;
- You receive all required travel documents from us after you are selected for the scholarship (OKP/MSP-scholarship candidates) or when we’ve received your payment (self-funded participant).
Technology Requirements Online Learning
Minimum technical and software requirements for online learning courses are:
- Stable internet connection: required to access the online learning platform and assignments (at least 3G mobile network).
- Hardware requirement: acces to a laptop, smartphone, tablet or a personal computer with webcam and microphone.