Forest and Farm Facility Phase II

More than 1.5 billion smallholders around the world depend on forest landscapes for their food and livelihoods. Collectively the gross annual value of their smallholder production of food, fuel, timber and non-timber forest products is between US$0.8 and 1.5 trillion, making them the world’s largest private sector.

They have defining significance for the world’s poverty reduction, food security, forest management, biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration and climate change adaptation. But enabling them to make a positive contribution requires investments in organisation and inclusive capacity development such that women and men, young and old can play their part.

The Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) is a partnership hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) that strengthens forest and farm producer organisations (FFPOs) to secure their rights, organise their businesses, sustainably manage their forests, and provide social and cultural services to the poor and marginalised. 

FFF Phase I (2012-18) exceeded all expectations as FFPOs themselves leveraged more than $100 million in additional finance, pressed through 51 policy changes (including long-stalled handovers of forest land rights), and attracted 158 new financial investments in the 262 business which diversified or added value through FFF support.

Phase II (2018-23) will build on this success by scaling-up activities in nine core partner countries: Bolivia, Ecuador (Latin America), Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Zambia and Togo (Africa) and Nepal and Vietnam (Asia).

Additional network countries for which FFF is actively seeking funding include Guatemala and Nicaragua (Latin America), Gambia and Liberia (Africa) and Indonesia and Myanmar (Asia).

Co-managed by FAO (management and in-country operations), IUCN (regional and global work), IIED (knowledge generation, monitoring and learning), and Agricord (FFPO organisational support), FFF continues with its unique focus on FFPOs including women, youth and indigenous peoples as primary agents of change.

It seeks to position them as the main implementers of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Indeed, it will strengthen FFPO contributions to at least 11 of 17 SDGs by supporting them to pursue: 

• Outcome 1: more enabling policy and legal frameworks for FFPOs (SDG16 and 17)
• Outcome 2: increased entrepreneurship, access to markets and finance through gender equitable value chains and business incubation within FFPOs (SDG1, 5, 8 and 12)
• Outcome 3: improved delivery of landscape scale mitigation, adaptation and climate resilience by FFPOs (SDG2, 13 and 15), and
• Outcome 4: improved and equitable access to social and cultural services through FFPOs (SDG3 and 10).

What is IIED doing?

IIED will be supporting FFF Phase II through synthesis of monitoring and learning, and new demand-led knowledge generation surveys that will help us be more innovative in co-producing new knowledge in the service of real FFPO needs.

IIED has already begun to develop guidance in new areas such as women’s entrepreneurships, access to finance for FFPOs, managing food-forest trade-offs, and ensuring meaningful work for youth to address issues such as rural outmigration.