The winner of the 2022 Arrell Global Food Innovation Award for community engagement is Access Agriculture!
Strengthening the knowledge and skills of farmers who are faced with diverse challenges and new demands is critical to local food systems. In many places, especially small, rural communities in the Global South, farmers benefit a lot from being able to learn from their fellow farmers, even if they live in different parts of the world.
Access Agriculture, winner of the 2022 Arrell Global Food Innovation Award for community engagement, helps to expand this capacity between farmers.
It works directly with community groups to produce and deliver high-quality, farmer-to-farmer training videos. The video resources help to provide informative and relevant content to farmers in small communities where otherwise these resources are limited or difficult to access.
The organization works to ensure the videos are available in local languages and accessible to smallholder farmers even in remote rural areas where technology, power and internet are limited. The videos are also available on an online platform where farmers and anyone working in agricultural extension and education can freely view and download them.
“Farmers are vitally important to rural and urban communities, providing healthy food that people need. Thanks to local community groups and grassroots organizations we are able to identify topics relevant across the Global South, where inspirational farmers can show others how to farm in harmony with the environment. These resources in local languages will have a lasting impact on today’s and future rural communities.”
Over the past decade, Access Agriculture has created 220 videos in more than 90 languages reaching 90 million people. There has been recent success with a network of young Entrepreneurs for Rural Access who use solar powered smart projectors to give video shows in areas without electricity.
The videos have a long-lasting impact. The information helps farmers produce, process and sell the food that their communities need and helps promote a sustainable and resilient food system for future generations.
The Arrell Global Food Innovation Awards are two $100,000 prizes that are awarded in the categories of research impact and community engagement. Awarded annually since 2018, the awards recognize individuals and organizations who have made significant impact to local and global food systems.
