🧑‍🌾 Excellence in Agricultural Extension and Farmer Training

Here are some notes for the podcast, drawing from the sources and our conversation history:

• Opening: The podcast, titled "What More Can We Do?", is inspired by a question from Catherine, a farmer in Malawi. This question encapsulates One Acre Fund's culture of continual improvement and its commitment to serving farmers.
• One Acre Fund's Purpose: The organization exists to make smallholder farmers more prosperous. They believe farmers have the most important jobs, as they grow food, steward the land, and drive rural economies. One Acre Fund sees smallholder farmers as an engine of global prosperity.
• 2024 Accomplishments: In 2024, One Acre Fund served over 5 million farming households, planted over 100 million trees, and delivered more than USD 450 million in impact to farmers. The additional impact generated is estimated to be enough to feed every person in Malawi for a full year.
• Strategic Priorities: One Acre Fund's strategy is organized around four key pillars: Impact, Scale, Financials, and People.
  • Impact: Focus on excellence in extension services, which involves disseminating information and building the capacities of farmers. This includes high-quality content, understanding farmer situations, and effective facilitation from Field Staff.
  • Scale: Focus on engaging youth and women farmers. One Acre Fund aims to create products and services that attract young people and address the specific challenges women face in agriculture.
  • Financials: Maintain a strong culture of financial stewardship and focus on internal controls to ensure everything is working as it should.
  • People: Focus on improving manager quality and developing leaders through various programs.
• Long-Term Goals: To build an enduring organization, One Acre Fund focuses on increasing resilience, building core capabilities, tending the garden for healthy growth, and creating a strong culture.
  • Increase Resilience: Deliver climate-resilience initiatives to farmers, focusing on improving plant and soil health, diversifying incomes, and creating safety nets.
  • Build Core Capabilities: Focus on being the best in the world at smallholder extension, supply chain, AgTech, financing, and advocacy. Winning in AgTech is especially important.
  • Tend the Garden: Good leadership requires attention to the different needs of each team and the interactions between them.
  • Create Culture: Culture plays an important role in becoming an enduring organization. The organization's culture began with Field Officers who looked up to farmers and asked what could be done better.
• Call to Action: Listeners are encouraged to reflect on how they can contribute to creating a bigger harvest for farmers and helping One Acre Fund achieve its 2030 vision of serving 10 million farmers and delivering $1 billion in impact per year.

Visit OAF website: oneacrefund.org