The Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation (CPF) works with smallholder farmers and their organisations. We work with ~280,000 smallholder tea, coffee and cocoa smallholder farmers across Africa and Latin America to develop innovative solutions to the challenges they face.
CPF was established to be an organisation led by smallholder producers, for smallholder producers. We’ve seen first-hand the wealth of experience, knowledge and expertise which exists in underserved rural farming communities, and our model and approach focus on creating opportunities for smallholders to share, build upon and strengthen this.
Our model and approach is focused on creating opportunities for smallholders to share, build upon and strengthen their knowledge and expertise. In practice, this means that the priorities of smallholder producers shape our strategy, programs and focus as an organisation. Recently our work has focused on developing an international network of Centres of Excellence (CoEs) hosted by our producer partner organisations. These CoEs act as sustainable, farmer-led businesses run by the smallholders we work with, providing a space for smallholders to visit and learn from fellow farmers and demonstration sites that help promoter farmers share practical skills of different methods of crop-farming with their fellow farmers.
Each of these CoEs is focused on one of our core thematic areas, defined as the major areas of interest for the smallholder farmers in our network:
This in-person knowledge sharing is also enhanced by WeFarm, a digital platform that supports farmer-farmer information sharing via SMS, enabling African producers to improve their knowledge, decision-making skills and livelihoods. We are also beginning to work with, and develop further digital tools that can help farmers access more information and complement the in-person activities.
