Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA)
“Empowering small scale women and men farmers in Asia
Our Nature
We are a regional alliance of 17 national federations and organizations of small scale women and men farmers and producers from 13 countries in Asia.
We were established in 2002 after a series of farmers’ exchange visits (FEVs) organized by our strategic NGO partner, AsiaDHRRA (Asian Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Asia).
In these five FEVs, conducted over three years, we saw the great need to come, share, learn and act together to-wards our common desire for a better quality of life for ourselves, our families, and our farming communities.
AFA invites national farmers’ organiza-tions as members and works with NGOs in facilitating the formation of national farmers’ organizations and in continuously building their capacities.
It convenes a General Assembly every two years and an Executive Committee meeting every semester.
Our Vision
We envision our rural farming communities as:
- Self-reliant, educated, happy, healthy, peaceful, and prosperous–free from hunger and poverty.
- Having access to and control over our lands, other basic productive resources, goods and services.
- Having access to fair markets for our products.
- Nurturing our farmlands via appro-priate, integrated, and environment-friendly practices and technologies.
- Participating in development processes through politically strong, socially responsive, culturally sensitive and economically viable FOs.
Our Mission
We aim to be:
- A strong and influential voice of small- scale women and men farmers in Asia.
- A strong lobby and advocacy group for farmers’ rights and development, genuine agrarian reform, and main- streaming sustainable agriculture in regional and national policies and programs.
- A facilitator in the trading and marketing of our members’ products.
- A venue for solidarity and exchange of information on agriculture and farmers’ development for our members.
Our Peasant Agenda
Together, we work to:
- Promote sustainable agricultural policies and practices.
- Study and promote alternatives to economic globalization.
- Promote agriculture among the young.
- Promote fair and just treatment of small-scale women and men farmers.
- Promote food sovereignty measures.
- Promote farmer-to-farmer market exchanges.
- Push for provisions on access to farm resources and rural development, and protection of small-scale women and men farmers’ rights in Asian inter-governmental bodies (ASEAN, SAARC, etc)
- Support environmentally-friendly adaptation and mitigation measures for climate change.
- Strengthen AFA at the national and regional levels.
Our Strategies (2011-2015)
By 2015, we will be:
The largest, most credible, transparent, trustworthy, and active organization of small scale women and men farmers in Asia working happily and harmoniously together towards the realization of our vision, mission and peasant agenda.
To achieve this, we will:
- Enhance networking activities and forge concrete partnerships with various organizations (e.g., other FOs, CSOs, GOs, NGOs, academe/research, business) in advocacy and other services to members (e.g. land tenure, agro-ecology, marketing and enterprise, women, gender equality, agri-health-nutrition-water-energy-food link, and youth).
- Make AFA an effective Knowledge and Learning Hub – capturing and sharing knowledge and lessons among FOs. We will document our stories, produce knowledge products such as manuals, case studies , videos, radio/tv programs as well as conduct study tours, farmers’ ex-change visits, learning and sharing sessions and farmer-to-farmer ex-tension.
- Diversify our funding sources via in-ternal and external resource genera-tion and effective secretariat man-agement.
Our Programs
Advocacy
- Consultation among members.
- Policy information, analysis and formulation.
- Lobbies and dialogues with decision-makers and influential persons and organizations.
- Campaigns and direct actions.
Knowledge Management and Sharing
Development of knowledge and skills of our leaders and members by:
- Capturing the knowledge generate from on-ground experiences of members.
- Sharing these experiences through online and offline activities.
Enterprise Development
Technical and managerial support to member’s initiatives in agricultural pro-duction, marketing, and enterprise de-velopment.
Enterprise development at the regional level.
Governance
Maintenance and upgrading of transparent, democratic, effective, efficient and sustainable organizational systems and processes for decision making and management.
CONTACT INFORMATION
For more information, please contact:
AFA
Rm. 206 Partnership Center
59 C. Salvador St., Loyola Heights, 1108 Quezon City, Philippines
Phone: (632) 436-4640
Telefax:(632) 425-0176
Email: afa@asianfarmers.org
Website: www.asianfarmers.org