Millions of smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa do not produce enough food from their small farms.

A typical smallholder farmer:

• Grows a diverse range of crops on poor soils over 0.2-2 hectares of land.
• Does not receive advice from an extension worker.
• Uses local unimproved varieties, which are susceptible to drought and disease.
• Practices poor soil and crop management.
• Keeps unproductive, unimproved breeds of livestock.
• Is risk-averse

Technologies have been developed by research to increase crop and livestock productivity many times. However, farmers are unaware of, and do not have local access to, these technologies. The main reason for this is that they do not have access to advisory services.

We have developed an the Village-Based Advisor (VBA) model to assist farmers to gain access to advisory services, inputs, and technologies they need to increase the productivity of their crops and livestock in a sustainable way.

FIPS Africa’s challenge is to ensure this approach is implemented to assist all farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa to become food secure.