Food, Agribusiness and Rural Markets in South Sudan

In 2015 and 2016, FARM II built on the successes of the first iteration, further scaling up activities, advancing collective marketing systems, and developing market opportunities that ushered smallholders into a nascent economic system. FARM was more than an agriculture project, however. It was a food security project that helped farmers to first feed their families, then their communities and country. It was also a livelihoods program that created economic opportunities and showed the rural poor how to create a living from farming. FARM was a resiliency project that helped farmers advance their economic progress, even during times of heightened insecurity and economic decline, by teaching them to produce their own food, which reduced dependence on imports and foreign aid. It was a civil society program that used agriculture as a mechanism to engage rural populations in a societal framework to collaborate on areas of common interest for individual benefit and the greater good. FARM also was a human capital project, creating a critical mass of knowledgeable and experienced farmers in South Sudan’s Greenbelt zone.