FERT > Discover FERT > Our mission

The mission FERT has pledged to undertake is that of contributing to improve the agricultural economies of developing or emerging countries. At the basis of the process implemented to carry out this mission are three key considerations:

The agricultural economy of a country rests fundamentally upon farmers.

feeding their country is their vocational task and to this end they must be able to live off their activity.

A farmer is a responsible entrepreneur.

capable of reasoning out by himself the multiple decisions he must make, based on his own objectives, his internal and external constraints and on the set of external information resources and production means he can have to access. As such, he deserves respect and consideration.

The professional organisation of farmers is a powerful tool for rural development.

In his relation with his technical, economical and institutional environment, a lone farmer has but little power. Only by gathering into adapted organisations can farmers:
- find common solutions to their common problems and manage the implementation of these solutions;
- weigh on the technical, economical and political environment through participation or negotiation, so as to defend common interests.

Relying on these fundamental principles, FERT supports the creation or the development of professional organisations of producers, with the firm belief that the latter can only arise and consolidate through and within permanent interaction between, on the one hand, concrete realisations of technical nature that meet the needs of their members (agronomic, commercial, financial actions...) and on the other hand, the fostering of structuring, between said members, into organisations.

Thus, for over 25 years and in more than ten countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Mediterranean Basin, Subsaharian Africa and Indian Ocean, FERT has been working hand in hand with organisation systems in which farmers at the base take full responsibility together and hence have active participation in the pursuit of their own development.

This notion is vital as it constitutes the founding grounds behind the mobilisation of the French farming profession who, substituting for mere technical interventions, favours the shift from a notion of assistance to a concept of partnership.

To ensure coherence with the principles above, FERT has compelled itself to follow two indispensable criteria in action conception:

Duration

Involvement with partners in the build-up of human organisations implies readiness to abide along with them for as much time as will be needed to accompany the slow evolution of mindsets that allows those organisations to achieve self-reliance ;

Continuity

Neither the economical activity from which agricultural organisation is born nor the associative dynamics that progressively arise between men can withstand a slackening in their monitoring, lest efforts committed be shattered and any ulterior attempts of revival be mortgaged.

FERT, as an international cooperation association born of the agricultural profession, carries out the role of an interface between action at field level and the set of professional skills to be marshalled in function of the stated needs.

It sets out to provide farmers in developing countries with the know-how acquired over more than fifty years of experience in producers organisation, in technical, economical, commercial and financial fields. To this end, it relies on the whole set of French professional agricultural organisations (Chambers of agriculture, Agricultural cooperatives, Specialised technical institutes, Credit unions…).

FERT participates in numerous projects combining multiple partners and dealing with food-producing and fodder cultivations, stockbreeding, applied research, technical progress spreading, and supplying, collecting, primary processing, commercialisation and credit services. Each and every one of these projects aim at promoting the training of farmers and their organisational capacities to allow them to improve both their mastery of production and their integration into the agrifood economy.

Its approach is based on three principles drawing from rustic experience: rigour, pragmatism and solidarity.