“The dialogue focused on the opportunities for smallholder farmers, who form the majority of the farmers in the region, that are being envisioned and created by the SADC Regional Agricultural Policy (RAP) as it is being formulated, and the existing challenges that they face
in accessing agricultural assets and their relatively low level participation in the rapidly changing agricultural output markets. The dialogue also discussed the important issues of the benefits that
smallholder farmers can derive from organising, setting up and running their own organisations to lobby and champion their causes and interests with the national governments and regional
institutions, as well as how gender is being mainstreamed within the context of developing the SADC RAP. The latter topic focused mainly on the challenges that women smallholder farmers face within
the agriculture sector.”
