The WFO General Assembly 2022 was held in Budapest, Hungary, from June 7-10, 2022. The event was organized in collaboration with the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture (NAC). Each year, the General Assembly brings farmer organizations, high-level representatives of international organizations, governments, private sector companies and civil society from around the world together to discuss, share and exchange visions and ideas on the challenges and opportunities facing the agricultural sector at the global level.

At the WFO General Assembly in Budapest 2022, the Transitional Agriculture participants had the opportunity to present the project to other farmer organizations. In addition, each farmer organization was given the chance to share their experiences from the Transitional Agriculture project as panelists in the following thematic workshop:

• Francis Mbabazi, Executive Secretary of INGABO (Rwanda) to the topic: The Role of Farmers’ Organisations and Agricultural Cooperatives in the Transition to Sustainable Food Systems
• Benjamin Obeng, Vice President of COFAG (Ghana) & Betty Chinyamunyamu, Executive Director of NASFAM (Malawi) to the topic: Women and Youth Entrepreneur-Centric Approach to Innovative Finance as a Tool to Empower the Overall Farming Community
• Ruramiso Mashumba, Youth Representative of ZFU (Zimbabwe) to the topic: Innovative Solutions and Business Models to Enable a Farmer-Driven Digital Transformation of Agriculture

For more information about the thematic workshops, please visit the WFO homepage: https://www.wfo-oma.org/wfo_news/wfo-ga-2022-highlights-from-the-first-day/.

The Transitional Agriculture project was festively closed during the WFO General Assembly on 07 June 2022 with a reception and closing remarks by former WFO President Mr. Theo de Jager, DBV President Mr. Joachim Rukwied, AKI Chairman Mr. Hans-Benno Wichert and participant Ms. Betty Chinyamunyamu from NASFAM (Malawi). Mrs. Chinyamunyamu emphasized once again how fruitful the exchange and the building of such a network with such diverse farmer organizations from different countries and levels (president-, CEO- and youth level) was and which added value this had for their farmer organization itself. Based on this, the group would like to continue the project on its own with regular digital meetings even without further financial support. This shows how useful the Transitional Agriculture project has been for the participants in the last 2.5 years, but also that such cross-national exchange formats for farmer organizations need initial support but can then be continued financially independent and self-sustaining. 

We would like to take this opportunity to thank our grant provider the Andreas Hermes Academy (AHA) and our funder the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) once again for making the Transitional Agriculture Project possible!