The Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation – CPF, (www.producersfoundation.org) is a UK-based charity that represents and support smallholder tea, coffee and cocoa farmers and their organisations located across East Africa, Latin America and Asia. CPF currently works with ~38 smallholder orga… read morenizations across 12 countries, reaching over 250,000 farmers.
CPF’s work builds on the long-term investment of the social enterprise Cafédirect plc (www.cafedirect.co.uk) in its smallholder partners, and focuses on strengthening smallholder farmers’ access to the training, education and information services they need to improve their farms and livelihoods. Emphasis is placed on supporting smallholders as leaders of their own training initiatives.
Current programmes include:
● Strengthening the capacity of each smallholder producer organisation that CPF works through the disbursement of small grants which organisations can invest in activities that they consider a priority – from strengthening their agricultural practices to accessing new markets for their products.
● Supporting smallholders to increasingly share information and knowledge with each other, for example through the development and recent launch of WeFarm – a worldwide peer-to-peer knowledge sharing network (www.wefarm.info)
● Supporting smallholder tea producers in Kenya and Uganda to develop and implement strategies that support their farmers to address and adapt to changing climatic conditions.