Partnerships between smallholder farmers and private sector investors for land rights

24 April 2014. Rome, Italy. IFAD organised a technical workshop to share some of IFAD’s and our partner’s experiences in developing partnerships between smallholder farmers and private sector investors and in particular some of the implications for land and natural resource rights. 

Speakers from UNCTAD, OXFAM, the private sector-led Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI) Platform, and Land Policy Initiative highlighting status and early results from the leading land and responsible agriculture investment guidelines. Namely, the Principles for Responsible Agriculture Investment (PRAI), the Guiding Principles on Large Scale Land Based Investments (in Africa), an SAI’s industry aligned Farmer Self-Assessment of sustainable agriculture practices.

During the workshop a range of business models that are being used by IFAD to structure agricultural investments in lower- and middle-income countries were showcased at the workshop. The following five experiences were presented and revealed what has worked – and what has not – in inclusive business models currently in practice: 

1. commercial oil palm farming in Uganda; 
2. integrating smallholder farmers in Swaziland’s sugar industry; 
3. building farmer’s income and safety nets while securing the local energy supply in Burkina Faso and Mali; 
4. organic and Fairtrade cocoa production in São Tomé; and, 
5. smallholder tea production in Rwanda.