The Farmers of the Future program is our learning laboratory for Professor Dov Pasternak’s vision to transform agricultural practice in the African Sahel. Dov was a world leader in dryland agriculture who literally wrote the book on Agricultural Prosperity in Dry Africa. In the Farmers of the Future model, women are organized into local village cooperatives, provided with water and power for irrigation, and taught to approach farming as a business. Our field technicians work with the women intensively for a minimum of 3 years to help them master new farming techniques.

The results are life-changing — generating up to twice the average income of Niger. That money provides access to education and medical care. It improves the family diet, living conditions, and overall quality of life. And as women become a major source of household income it raises their self-image and self-respect. It fundamentally changes how they are viewed within the household and the community.

Farmers of the Future has been patiently tested in Niger since 2012. Now, with the creation of the Dov Center we will have the technical capacity to expand the FOF philosophy to hundreds of villages throughout the country.

You can help tackle poverty, hunger, and malnutrition in rural Africa through your support of Eliminate Poverty NOW.