Towards Responsible Service Delivery to Smallholder Farmers

In the past, and still recently, there have been many cases of bad practices in financial or agricultural service delivery that caused harm to smallholder farmers. To avoid such harmful practices and ensure responsible service delivery to smallholder farmers, the IDH Farmfit Fund and Cerise+SPTF are convinced that the sector must work on defining, committing to, and implementing client protection standards.

In 2022, the IDH Farmfit Fund and Cerise+SPTF decided to work on the development of a specific client protection assessment tool for the agricultural sector, building on the experience of the inclusive finance industry. The Agri CP Tool has been structured along the 8 Client Protection Standards which many impact investors and rating agencies are already familiar with. At this stage, the Agri CP Tool should be seen as aspirational to offer a shared understanding and vision for the agricultural sector. The tool holds the potential to become a reference tool for the whole sector, helping investors and agribusinesses ensure that they provide fair and safe services to smallholder farmers and avoid practices that might cause harm.

Different stakeholders can contribute to testing and developing the Agri CP Tool:

• Investors can apply the tool for Due Diligence of investments in agricultural value chain actors that interact with smallholder farmers on a commercial basis.
• Agricultural value chain actors can use the tool as a self-assessment to evaluate risks and best practices in smallholder service delivery.
• Financial service providers, like microfinance institutions, can better use the CP standards for inclusive finance. Nevertheless, the Agri CP tool may offer relevant insight in assessing collaboration with agricultural value chain actors.

Learn more by downloading the publication below, and contact us if you are interested in testing/developing the tool with us!