Smallholder farming family in a cabbage field in Honduras
Small farms produce almost half of the world’s food needs. © SDC/Fritz R. Staehelin

Smallholders and family farms play a key role in feeding the world's growing population and creating and preserving jobs in rural areas. They can also help to stem migration. In order to stay in business, smallholders need access to stable markets, infrastructure adapted to their needs, and access to education, training and financial and information services. The SDC helps them to adapt to change and to boost production in a sustainable way.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations  defines smallholders as small-scale farmers, pastoralists, forest keepers and fishers who manage areas of less than 10 hectares. Smallholder farms are characterised by family-focused motives and it is the families who are responsible for everything from production to farm maintenance. Part of what is produced is consumed by the family itself. Smallholder farming is about a third less productive than large-scale farming. Despite this fact – or indeed because of it – Switzerland is convinced that supporting smallholder and family farming contributes to alleviating world hunger and poverty.

The SDC's support for smallholders and family farms in developing countries mainly consists of assisting them to adapt to climate change, to changing available means and methods of production, as well as to new market demands in order to boost and improve their production.

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Current projects

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Programme d’Appui aux Filières Agropastorales de Sikasso – PAFA

01.06.2013 - 30.09.2021

La DDC soutient le Conseil Régional de Sikasso et les partenaires privés locaux dans l’amélioration des conditions cadres pour le développement des filières pomme de terre et lait. Les appuis apportés contribueront à une meilleure organisation des différents segments de ces filières, de la production au marché et à la valorisation locale des produits au profit des petits producteurs et transformateurs. A terme, plus de 360'000 personnes assureront leur sécurité alimentaire et réduiront leur pauvreté.


Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development - Research Module on Ecosystems

15.05.2013 - 31.12.2023

Enhancing sustainable and climate-friendly use and management of ecosystems for human well-being is at the core of a new research module in the context of SDC’s and the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF) joint r4d Program (Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development; www.r4d.ch). Researchers from Switzerland with their partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will jointly generate new insights and develop innovative concepts and tools for a more sustainable and equitable provision of ecosystem services benefiting the poor.


Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development - Research Module on Food Security

15.05.2013 - 31.12.2023

Achieving food security remains a global challenge. The SDC’s and the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF) joint r4d Program (Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development; www.r4d.ch) will promote research and innovation in agricultural and food systems to enhance food security in the context of global sustainable development. Researchers from Switzerland with their partners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America will jointly generate new insights and approaches that contribute to meet the global demand for food in an environmentally and socially sustainable way.


Local Roads Improvement Programme (LRIP – I)

01.12.2012 - 31.12.2021

Past SDC interventions have focussed on making rural road construction work for the poor and disadvantaged through labour-intensive construction methods. This project now takes proven approaches further by ensuring even more all-weather accessibility to markets and services by emphasising the importance of maintenance and preservation of built roads through promotion of labour-based roads maintenance methods and by fostering an institutional process in the districts, which should pave the way for the highly successful concepts of road construction and maintenance to be adopted as national standards.


Object 157 – 161 of 161