EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Farmer Support Programme (FSP) is part of Solidaridad’s vision of a world in which everything we produce and consume can sustain us while we maintain our respect for the planet, each other and future generations. Solidaridad’s mission is to bring together supply chain actors and involve them in innovative solutions to improve production and achieve sector transformation at national and global level. FSP, which ran from 2011 to mid-2016, has been Solidaridad’s biggest programme so far towards this goal. APPROACH FSP aimed to demonstrate the opportunities to relieve poverty in five commodities: cotton, livestock, soy, sugarcane and palm oil. Solidaridad collaborated with globally organized mainstream multi-stakeholder bodies (‘roundtables’) and their members, comprising private companies and civil society organizations. When FSP started in 2011, the roundtable (RT) initiatives had drawn up democratically established standards and governance structures for companies that

want to improve sustainability. By using the RT standards as reference and their members as (private sector) partners, Solidaridad embedded the FSP programme in institutions with a much bigger sphere of influence. At the same time Solidaridad was able to contribute during the projects to the development of roundtable strategies, standards and procedures based on field experience. FSP aims to show that farmers and farm workers can participate in, and benefit from, global sustainability initiatives if supported by value chain companies and civil society organizations. FIELD PROGRAMME RESULTS In the period 2011-2016, FSP implemented 56 producer projects in 27 countries, directly benefiting over 638,000 agricultural producers (of which over 438,000 producers adopted better practices) and over 208,000 workers, and improving the management of 2.67 mln hectares of cotton, livestock, palm oil, soy and sugar cane fields.

FIGURE 1: Farmer Support Programme field project map

China

Belize

Mexico Guatemala

Mali

Honduras

Pakistan

Senagal

India

Nicaragua

Papua New Guinea

Colombia

Kenya

Ghana

Ecuador

Tanzania Malawi

Brazil

Bolivia Paraguay

Mozambique

Namibia

Swaziland

Uruguay South Africa

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Malaysia

Solidaridad – The Farmer Support Programme and Bridging the Gap

Indonesia

The producer support projects received €15.1m in grant funding, which was supplemented by additional funding of €37.7m from project partners, of which private sector contributions amounted to €22.3m and public sector co-funding to €15.4m. The structure of FSP required Solidaridad’s Regional Expertise Centres in the global south to come up with proposals for public-private-civil society (PPC) consortia, which resulted in a substantial buy-in from emerging market companies. Solidaridad managed to attract over € 33m in in-kind and cash support from the local private sector. This demonstrates that there is a clear business case for local commodity producers to invest in local farmers and smallholders, as they are the first to benefit from the increased supply and quality of raw materials. Improvements in farmers’ performance (as observed in FSP’s portfolio of field projects, described in more detail in section A.1 of this report) include: • Widespread adoption of good practices which has resulted in increased productivity. Soy production has increased in India by 20%; in Bolivia by 25% and in Mozambique by 10%; • Farmers have reduced their costs through greater precision in the use of seeds, agrochemicals and fertilizers. For example, sugarcane farmers in Pakistan have reduced pesticides by 32% and fertilizer use by 27%; palm oil farmers in Colombia have reduced the use of agrochemicals by 26%; and cotton farmers in India reduced the use of chemical fertilizers by 74%; • Farmers have improved their financial management, improving incomes by more than 10% for soy farmers in Bolivia, livestock farmers in Namibia and South Africa and producers in Brazil; • Improved environmental management using the Roundtable standards as a benchmark. Examples include the management and restoration of riparian vegetation on soybean and oil palm farms, waste disposal and storage in countries such as Kenya, where biogas digesters were installed in a slaughterhouse, and reduced water use in sugar cane, cotton and oil palm cultivation, for example in Colombia where water use has decreased 25% from 0.88m3 to 0.65m3 per ton of palm fruit. Improved access to knowledge, services and markets. Section B provides more examples of pro-producer innovations leading to:

• The strengthening of farmer organizations, which has enabled some to become strong and bankable SMEs. In the case of the sugarcane project in Pakistan or the India soy programme this has led to the creation of a paid service for Farmer Field Schools; • Income diversification that has allowed farmers to access new markets, including palm oil farmers in Brazil or soy farmers in Mozambique; • D evelopment of innovative tools to help farmers produce more sustainably. These tools have benefitted farmers by improving their access to technical and market information. Examples include the development of the information portal in China and the development of the soy app in India to monitor productivity. SECTOR TRANSFORMATION RESULTS The FSP grant has allowed Solidaridad to continue to work with Dutch and multinational companies from its Netherlands office, as well as develop corporate engagement and market development capacity in the other Regional Expertise Centres (RECs), with the emphasis on the three major emerging economies in the FSP programme: Brazil, China and India. During the implementation of FSP, this allowed us to form partnerships with 90 consumer goods companies and 190 value chain companies worldwide that sell or buy more sustainable raw materials now, than they did before they began working with Solidaridad. Most companies participated in commodity-specific projects, working with direct suppliers or smallholders that had no direct (or known) link with the company. With a handful of companies a more strategic collaboration is developing; in the case of Unilever and Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) this has resulted in the formalization of a strategic partnership. Besides promoting sustainable sourcing through international market development, we were also able to scale up the programme thanks to the success of our projects on the ground. Producers and processors beyond the direct target group and implementing partners have adopted several of our projects in various ways: • copying good practices by other farmers. This can be seen among soy farmers in India or livestock farmers in Namibia, where neighbouring farmers copied practices they saw on farms in the project; • crowding-in by value chain actors and service providers. The most successful example of crowding in

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was in palm oil. Building consortia of companies and cooperatives and the establishment of multi-stakeholder platforms contributed significantly to crowding in. The Better Mill Initiative (BMI) was another example, with several brands joining the programme. In the BMI and soy cases, Solidaridad contributed to overall sector dynamics through measures such as participating in conferences or by establishing national platforms such as the India Soy Forum or the PASH consortium in Honduras. This pre-competitive, inclusive approach was recognized by the Ford Motor Company’s Leadership Award, which was won by the Better Mill Initiative in China in December 2016; • Increased commitment towards sustainability and buy-in from the sectors. This has been the case in Colombia, where as a result of changes to corporate attitudes 15 companies made a commitment to produce sustainable palm oil (200,000 tons by 2016). In Honduras and Ecuador, the palm oil sector has also committed itself to sustainably produced palm oil and has embraced RSPO certification. Through FSP Solidaridad established Regional Expertise Centres (Section A.3) that enable Solidaridad to have boots and brains on the ground in all major production and consumer regions. Solidaridad’s regional teams connect field projects not only to international markets, but also to global roundtables (section A.2) ánd local policy processes. Achievements include: • Increased presence, understanding and awareness of roundtable standards such as the BCI in Mali, where a local organization and FSP partner, APROCA, has been strengthened so that it can take over the regional coordination of BCI across West Africa. RTRS has been adapted and adopted locally in China, Mozambique and India, and RSPO in Latin America, (Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador). In the latter two countries FSP has been crucial for national interpretation of RSPO; • Incorporation of recommendations from project teams into government policies. This has been the case in Malawi, where the Seed Policy was adjusted and a draft sugarcane industry regulatory framework has been prepared. The government of Indonesia has expressed its commitment to implement successful sustainability practices among independent palm oil farmers. The Municipality of Yby Pyta

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in Paraguay has adjusted its land use planning as a result of the local FSP project, while in Brazil the FSP sugarcane project led to the creation of a federal retraining programme for sugarcane cutters who were laid off when harvesting was mechanized. BEYOND THE FARMER SUPPORT PROGRAMME FSP has undergone a mid-term review and final evaluation (see section D), which confirmed FSP’s approach was effective and most targets were achieved, but also provided some valuable lessons for improvement. As a result four innovative approaches were developed in the last six months of the FSP under the ‘top-up’ ‘Bridging the Gap’ grant (between FSP 20112015 and the current Practice for Change programme that started in July 2016). These approaches – the continuous improvement monitoring tool Rural Horizons, access to finance, communities of change and impact investment – address the limitations of donor and certification-driven approaches and are described in more detail in section B. They have been documented and shared within the Solidaridad Network to serve as inspiration for the current programming. Practice for Change applies the methodologies and lessons from FSP to the entire Solidaridad portfolio of commodity sectors, including the development of transversal topics such as robust infrastructures and sustainable landscapes at country level. Like FSP, Practice for Change employs the public-private partnership approach and will be aligned closely with the recently approved strategic partnership ‘Veranderen door Bepleiten’ (known as Solidaridad’s Advocacy for Change programme) as well as other private sector development interventions funded by the ministry and others. GUIDANCE TO THIS REPORT This report has been divided in five main sections: Section A describes the achievements under the Farmer Support Programme in the period 20112015, including results from our previous programme (Schokland Fund) which ran into FSP, the results of FSP field projects, the establishment of the Regional Expertise Centres and the development of the five roundtables supported from 2011-2015; Section B describes the achievements of the field projects executed under the Bridging the Gap programme from the period January to June 2016, including the innovative approaches developed in response to the lessons learned from FSP 2011-2015;

Solidaridad – The Farmer Support Programme and Bridging the Gap

Section C presents the approaches and achievements for 2011-2016 (both programmes) on partnership development and corporate engagement; Section D presents the Learning, Governance and Outreach results for 2011-2016 (both programmes) including measureable results (Key Performance Indicators) and includes a summary of the external evaluation of FSP, recommendations from the evaluators and lessons learned by the FSP team; Section E presents the financial results from January 2011 to June 2016, describes the match-funding arrangements and includes the auditor´s statement.

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