What we do

Sustainable Agricultural Chain Development

Vredeseilanden is active within Sustainable Agricultural Chain Development. Our aim is to enable organizations of smallholder family farmers to successfully participate within sustainable value chains. We invest in the capabilities of these organizations and their members to become strong collective business organizations, while linking up these organizations with other chains actors like processors, traders, retailers, consumers… We also invest in connecting these farmer organizations with higher level farmer organizations and support these in their advocacy work towards governments and private actors to create an institutional environment that enables the position of smallholder family farmers within sustainable agricultural chains.

Through 8 regional Vredeseilanden Offices (VECOs) we support chain development programmes in Africa, Asia and Latin-America.

Some cases

Food aid... from CongoIn 2008, the North Kivu farmers' movement, the Belgian Development co-operation and Vredeseilanden joined forces and lobbied the WFP headquarters in Rome to include local farmer organisations in their list of suppliers.
Improving the rice chain in BeninRice is becoming increasingly important in Benin. Farmers’ organisations cooperate with the Belgian retailer Colruyt and VECO to improve the rice chain.
Sustainable rice chain in IndonesiaIn this upland area of Central Java, farmers grow organic rice for their own needs and for sale. However, the farmers do face challenges, such as limited market access and limited availability of organic rice.

VECO around the globe

Zoom (double click) and drag on the map to navigate. Click on a country to find out what agricultural chains we're working on.