£41 Million Committed To Poor Farmers In Developing Nations

Bill Gates at United Nations announcement

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation have unveiled a groundbreaking initiative to help poor farmers across the developing world to significantly increase their incomes.

The initiative, Purchase for Progress (P4P), aims to help hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers access reliable markets to sell surplus crops at competitive prices, bolstering fragile local economies.

P4P will help change the way WFP purchases food locally, strengthening the role of smallholder farmers in agricultural markets, enabling them to gain more from supplying food to WFP's global operations. It will be launched in 21 pilot countries over the next five years, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa and Central America.

The foundations, along with the Belgian government, have committed $76 million (£41M).

Josette Sheeran, WFP executive director, said: "The world's poor are reeling under the impact of high food and fuel prices, and buying food assistance from developing world farmers is the right solution at the right time"

"Purchase for Progress is win-win --- we help our beneficiaries who have little or no food and we help local farmers who have little or no access to markets where they can sell their crops."

Joining Sheeran at the United Nations announcement was Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Howard G. Buffett, president of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation; and the presidents of Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.

P4P aims to significantly increase incomes of at least 350,000 farmers in the pilot countries. Ultimately, the intention is to support farmers to capitalize on the market offered by WFP and to connect them to other local and regional food markets.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation committed $66 million (£35.5M) for projects in 10 African countries, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation committed $9.1 million (£4.9M) for projects in seven countries, and the Belgian government contributed $750,000 (£400,000) for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

WFP is the world's single largest purchaser of food for humanitarian operations.

The majority of the world's poorest people lives in rural areas and most rely on agriculture for food and income.