Communities accelerate local food systems' resilience in the Sahel with farmer-managed natural regeneration

The project works to accelerate the resilience of local food systems through Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) in Burkina Faso, Niger and Senegal.Small-scale farmers in the Sahel region suffer from the impacts of climate change, degraded land and lack of technical assistance from the government. Their productivity per hectare is often too low to provide their families with an adequate diet all year round. As a result, especially vulnerable groups suffer from undernourishment and are dependent on external food aid. The intervention strategy of the project works via three pathways of change: 1. Further expansion of the application of FMNR and scaling the availability of FMNR-products on local markets;2. Training of communities on a healthy diet and ensuring that FMNR-products are accessible and affordable for undernourished groups;3. Scaling the number of hectares of farmland under sustainable land use practices.The results of these activities are increased productivity of 36,600 small-scale food producers (men, women, youth) who have adopted FMNR-practices.The targeted benefiiaries of the interventions are small producers (men, women, youth) aged 15 to 49 years, who have little employment opportunities or access to resources. The main concern of all these beneficiaries and their households is the permanent need for food and nutritional security. Taking into account the challenges of social cohesion between displaced people and host communities, in Burkina Faso the project targets 50% of displaced people with little integration and no access to natural resources and production factors, and 50% of host communities with the largest number of displaced people.