What Oxfam is doing
Oxfam partners with small-scale farmers around the world to confront the challenges that keep them from earning a decent living.
We help farmers do the following:
- Access new markets, such as fair trade and organic, which pay higher prices for their goods;
- Understand and respond to marketplace demands so they can compete in mainstream markets;
- Develop sustainable methods, such as the System of Rice Intensification in East Asia, that require fewer inputs and produce higher yields;
- Diversify their farms so they can eat healthier and protect themselves should one crop fail or lose value on the world market;
- Survive climate change and drought by planting new varieties of seeds, exploring different irrigation techniques, or advocating funding for farmers to become stronger in the face of global warming;
- Organize into cooperatives and other associations that strengthen their abilities to compete, to represent their own interests, and to risk testing new markets and methods.
Even as Oxfam works with local farming communities to help them earn a more stable and sustainable living, we also campaign for changes in the global trade policies that have institutionalized rural poverty. Our US Farm Bill campaign focused on reforming this legislation so that it better protected the environment, fed the hungry, and gave family farmers in the US and overseas the chance to earn a decent living. While the 2008 Farm Bill ultimately fell short of reforming the trade-distorting subsidies that harm farmers here and abroad, Oxfam is building on this progress by campaigning for decision-makers to create better trade policies that increase market access and provide greater investment in farmers around the world.
