The Smallholder Pilot Project

About the project

Countries: Thailand, Macedonia, Kenya, and Ghana

Period: 2004 - 2007

Project partner: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ, now GIZ), Gesellschaft für Ressourcenschutz (GfRS), and other programs implemented by GTZ, DFID (now the FCDO), and USAID

Objective: The GLOBALG.A.P. Secretariat and partners sought to identify to what extent small-scale farmers in developing countries are likely to be excluded from global value chains and what support is needed to enable smallholders to seize opportunities for accessing higher value markets.

Approach: The project included 23 producer groups with more than 1,558 farmers from four countries across three continents – Kenya, Ghana, Thailand, Macedonia. Of these 23 groups, 17 had achieved certification by 2007. A Quality Management System (QMS) manual was tested to support local stakeholders in creating their own document and internal control system that is fully compliant with the GLOBALG.A.P. rules for group certification.

Outcome: The project resulted in significant improvements in the technical and managerial capacities of farmers, group managers, and service providers, as well as in farmer groups’ institutional capacities to jointly manage GLOBALG.A.P. Option 2 certification. Most pilot farms increased their incomes through higher productivity and reduced production costs and rejects. Furthermore, the membership in several pilot farms increased. One main outcome of this project was the QMS manual as support for local stakeholders.

The project showed that it is important to inform producers, and especially resource-poor and risk-averse smallholders, of probable benefits and costs of certification to assist them in making informed business and investment decisions. Based on the results and challenges identified during the project, GLOBALG.A.P. made changes to address the needs of smaller producers and make the services more accessible. These include the development of the Farm Assurer program* and a decreased registration fee to the database for micro-sized producers.

*The GLOBALG.A.P. Farm Assurer Program was succeeded by the Registered Trainer program in 2022.