One Acre Fund

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One Acre Fund: Planting Prosperity

A compelling problem: Over a billion people are still subsistence farming, eking out a scant living and often hungry. To find a way out of poverty, these farmers desperately need access to credit, inputs, training, and markets.

Mission

Get farming families out of extreme poverty

The idea

Bundle together training, credit, and access to markets and deliver them to existing community groups of farmers

How it works

  • Identify community groups and organize members into stable ten-member subgroups (“producer groups”)
  • Bulk-purchase and deliver crop inputs to producer groups
  • Train farmer groups that meet throughout the crop cycle
  • Consolidate crops and sell in bulk to buyers
  • Capture repayment in kind or in cash

How it will go to scale

Via NGOs (including One Acre Fund’s own growth). New field operations are subsidized until they break even; over time, a combination of donor funds and earned income drive growth. Eventually, One Acre will explore implementation by governments as well.

Progress so far

Scale up: In 2011, OAF is on track to enroll 65,000 farm families in Kenya and Rwanda with an average annual farm income increase per acre of 100% ($120), and overall 98% loan repayment rates.

Visit the website

www.oneacrefund.org

75% of the world’s poorest are farmers who have been bypassed by both the Green Revolution and the emergence of global markets.

This represents the biggest client base of poor people in the world. Seeing opportunity in disparity, Andrew Youn started One Acre Fund in Kenya and Rwanda to pioneer a new model for investing in smallholder farmers. Rural smallholder farming families experience a season of hunger every year and One Acre Fund aims to end this food crisis by empowering farmers with the tools they need. One Acre overcomes the lack of infrastructure in rural areas by providing farmers with the training, inputs, technologies, credit and access to markets they need to prosper. This cost effective model could provide a path out of poverty for millions of farmers.


A compelling problem

Over a billion people are still subsistence farming, eking out a scant living and often hungry. To find a way out of poverty, these farmers desperately need access to credit, inputs, training, and markets.

A scalable solution

Mulago assesses scalability based on five characteristics common to efforts that have taken lasting impact to scale.

Real impact: One Acre tracks changes in farm productivity with a random selection of One Acre Fund farmers, and compares them to a control group. In 2011 One Acre Fund will double the productivity per acre of ~65,000 farm families, an annual increase of $120 per acre.

Cost-effective: Using the Mulago metric of additional three-year income per donor dollar, One Acre Fund will increase 3-year farmer incomes by $360 at a total donor cost of $129, or $2.8 of additional farm income per donor dollar. As they recover more field expenses this amount is projected to exceed $4 additional income per donor dollar.

Lasting behavior: Change in behavior is driven and maintained by increased food and profits for farmers and their families.

Easy replication: One Acre Fund’s systematic model is designed for maximum efficiency at scale and is highly adaptable.

A viable route to scale: One Acre Fund is making steady progress toward complete field sustainability and their model has been successfully taken up by another organization.

Capacity to Deliver

An experienced business manager, Founder Andrew Youn has built an organization that continues to deliver at an exceptional pace and quality. In just four years they have built the systems and field operations required to reach over 65,000 farm families in Kenya and Rwanda and are poised to reach thousands more. Along with a superb staff, Andrew has engaged a diversified board of directors with expertise in strategy, operations and fundraising.

updated June 2011