Securing Change through Agricultural Livelihoods and Empowerment (SCALE)

Smallholder agriculture feeds a large proportion of the global population, is a driver of economic growth, reduces poverty and contributes to political stability. The SCALE global programme aims to capture this potential and deliver sustainable local food systems that guarantee the food security of smallholder farmers, particularly women in developing countries. The programme aims to develop sustainable national food systems. We define national food systems as including the following :

• All activities from food production to food consumption.
• The outcomes of these activities (food security, environmental sustainability, and social welfare).
• The interactions of these with the physical and human environment.

Sustainable food systems can be created by improving the productivity of food-producing smallholder farmers, reducing food losses, enhancing storage, building reserves, increasing access to markets and creating an enabling policy environment. Supportive policies must recognise the rights of smallholder farmers to land and resources, respond to food production challenges, overturn access barriers to; markets, information, inputs, technology and external support and nurture a positive enabling environment. Smallholder producers would then become a functional component of the national food system, catalysing more resilient rural markets that stimulate the redistribution of food from areas of surplus to areas of deficiency, strengthening rural development through revenue sharing and rural employment. Smallholder producers would then become a functional component of the national food system, catalysing more resilient rural markets that stimulate aid the redistribution of food from areas of surplus to areas of deficiency, strengthening rural development through revenue sharing and rural employment.