CRS has been working with new technical partners who use a wide range of approaches, methods, and tools for linking smallholder farmers to markets. This meeting will review different methodologies, assess strengths and gaps, and agree on a format for a new learning alliance.

Four LACRO country programs are now implementing Coffee Assistance for Enhanced Livelihoods (CAFE Livelihoods). The three-year, $8.2 million project is designed to help more than 7,000 smallholder farmers in El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and Nicaragua expand their participation in high-value coffee markets, with a special focus on “sustainable coffee” exports to the United States.

This summer CRS will start work on two innovative projects in LACRO funded by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. These initiatives reflect the company’s growing engagement with issues lying beyond the coffee chain, including food security, migration and climate change.

What is corporate America doing for sustainable agriculture and smallholder farmers? Starting next month, the Ag and Market Update will join forces with the Sustainable Food Lab to provide some answers to that question. The Lab will contribute news of upcoming events and stories from the field about working with the private sector on the challenge of creating more sustainable and equitable food systems.

CRS staff and partners worked with farmers and other stakeholders in Africa, India, Latin America, and Southeast Asia over the last five years to develop agricultural business enterprises.

Documents CRS’ experience with an agroenterprise “learning alliance”—a participatory approach to learning that aims to accelerate institutional change and deepen the level of impact.

Catholic Relief Services has debuted a new agricultural programming strategy that links farming with other efforts in emergency response, health, water, sanitation and nutrition. The new approach also makes linkages to natural resource management, climate change adaptation,  microfinance, knowledge management and communication technologies.