[{"bbox": [147, 151, 445, 177], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Activities related to output 2.1"}, {"bbox": [147, 190, 1082, 271], "category": "Text", "text": "Supporting farmers, to women as a priority, with improved skills and knowledge, access to services (e.g., climate related information and extension services) to increase their productivity and enhance business and governance performance."}, {"bbox": [147, 281, 1082, 336], "category": "Text", "text": "**Activity 2.1.1: Strengthen production capacity of men and women small-holder farmers to enhance their ability to supply schools with local produce and to access other formal markets.**"}, {"bbox": [147, 347, 1082, 535], "category": "Text", "text": "Areas where capacities of farmers will be strengthened include good agronomic practices, production entrepreneurial skills, and agribusiness. Farmers will be trained on adoption of good agriculture practices (application of organic fertilisers, compost making, crop rotation etc.) and linked to schools for supply of diversified food commodities through the facilitation of competitive tendering processes (link to Activity 1.1.1). Targeted farmers will be those belonging to organisations within a close radius of targeted schools and ECDs. They will be able to supply more and of better quality products to schools as well as in local markets, with ultimately an increase in their income opportunities."}, {"bbox": [147, 546, 1082, 627], "category": "Text", "text": "Additional support to smallholder farmers will be related to farming as a business concept including contracting and pricing negotiation skills, and further linkages with KULIMA and other livelihood/ food security programmes being explored."}, {"bbox": [147, 638, 1082, 691], "category": "Text", "text": "**Activity 2.1.2: Support to organised/group farming management and accountability. Promotion of women's participation as well as leadership roles within the farmers groups.**"}, {"bbox": [147, 703, 1082, 810], "category": "Text", "text": "Organised farming is beneficial for smallholder farmers as it brings together collective expertise and combined efficiencies through aggregation, supporting access to more profitable markets. However, cooperatives become exponentially more complex to manage as they scale up and the administrative burden of large memberships creates an artificial limitation to their size."}, {"bbox": [147, 821, 1082, 876], "category": "Text", "text": "Smallholder farmers, especially women will be empowered with skills to engage in cooperative/group farming, such as training on financial management and record keeping and exchanges forums."}, {"bbox": [147, 888, 445, 914], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Activities related to output 2.2"}, {"bbox": [147, 926, 1082, 1008], "category": "Text", "text": "Activities related to Output 2.2. will focus on supporting farmers and their organisations to boost market-oriented agricultural diversification, mitigate post-harvest losses, and improve food safety and quality standards of the food supplied to schools and ECD centres for home-grown school feeding."}, {"bbox": [147, 1019, 1082, 1150], "category": "Text", "text": "The Action will use a market oriented production concept, where farmers assess and analyse the market before production. Government adopted the Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion (SHEP) approach to support smallholder farmers. In addition to trainings, activities include participatory local Market Surveys, crop/enterprise selection and development of crop production calendar."}, {"bbox": [147, 1163, 1082, 1217], "category": "Text", "text": "**Activity 2.2.1: Support farmers and their organisations to improve management and quality of the produce.**"}, {"bbox": [147, 1229, 1082, 1468], "category": "Text", "text": "Farmers will be trained on post-harvest management practices, including storage of commodities. Through monitoring by extension officers, commodities in storage will be regularly checked to ensure compliance with acceptable moisture levels. The activity contemplates awareness and promotion of techniques to control aflatoxin levels in production of maize and groundnuts, as well as the approach to tackle post-harvest losses, and integrates social behaviour change communication (SBCC), also utilising key influencers of smallholder farmers, field demonstrations, coaching of smallholder farmers, and promotion of hermetic storage solutions. About **20,000 smallholder farmers**, with a focus on women farmers, are planned to be supported through this action (activities related to outputs 2.1 and 2.2)."}, {"bbox": [147, 1480, 445, 1507], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## Activities related to output 3.1"}, {"bbox": [147, 1519, 1082, 1574], "category": "Text", "text": "**Activity 3.1.1 Randomised control trial conducted.** This activity refers to measuring nutritional, education and economic impact of school meals at community level."}, {"bbox": [976, 1680, 1082, 1706], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 9 of 26"}]