The community of Ndiob consists of 18 villages that were formed into 5 village groups of a certain area, which focused on one of the five collectively defined themes. The Agriculture Development Programme includes hence five themes:

1. Agriculture, including infrastructure and agricultural equipment, seeds stocks, intensification and diversification of agroecology;
2. Livestock breeding and farming, including cattle breeding, poultry food production for livestock;
3. Soil fertility, including anti-erosion measures; desalination, composting;
4. Management of natural resources, including improving the state of the valley and ponds, restoration of soil coverage, strengthening of local governance;
5. Food security, including construction of processing and storage facilities for agricultural produce, improving nutrition projects, local bank for savings and micro-credits to support local agriculture, livestock and poultry breeding as well as the use of the ponds.

Responsible for the policies are the Mayor and Municipal Council of Ndiob, with input from the local communities. The policies are implemented through the municipality, with support of strategic partners such as ENDA PRONAT, and in cooperation with the Collective of Friends and Partners of the Community of Ndiob (CAPCOMMUN).

To implement its vision, the Ndiob Municipal Council has set itself a certain number of objectives both in terms of self-sufficiency in certified seed and production for sale of cereals and peanuts seeds which are the main cash crop of the municipality. Ndiob’s minimum goal is to produce the village’s annual consumption of 3,650 tonnes of millet and to plant peanuts on 2,500 ha to be sold as certified seeds on markets and thereby create cash revenues. It selected 84 seed breeders, each one planting one hectare for breeding stock. Each of these producers has received from Ndiob municipality and from CAPCOMMUN partners seeds and reinforcements in technical capacities.

The Good Food Purchasing Program’s metric-based, flexible framework encourages large public institutions to measure and then make shifts in their food purchases. By adopting the framework, food service institutions commit to improving their regional food system by implementing meaningful purchasing standards in all five value categories:

• Local Economics: the Good Food Purchasing Program supports local small and mid-sized agricultural and food processing operations.
• Environmental Sustainability: the Good Food Purchasing Progam requires institutions to source at least 15% of the food from producers that employ sustainable production systems.
• Valued Workforce: the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes safe and healthy working conditions and fair compensation for all food chain workers and producers.
• Animal Welfare: the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes healthy and humane care for farm animals.
• Nutrition: Finally, the Good Food Purchasing Policy promotes health and well-being by outlining best practices that offer generous portions of vegetables, fruit, whole grains and minimally processed foods, while reducing salt, added sugars, saturated fats, and red meat consumption, and eliminating artificial additives.

TEEBAgriFood’s Evaluation Framework answers the question: What should we evaluate about food systems? And TEEBAgriFood’s methodologies answer the question: How should we do these evaluations? TEEBAgriFood illustrates five families of applications to compare: (a) different policy scenarios; (b) different farming typologies; (c) different food and beverage products; (d) different diets/ food plates; and (e) adjusted versus conventional national or sectoral accounts.

AGRUPAR could well serve as a model for other cities and form the basis for a national policy on local production.

CONQUITO has favoured observation tours and exchanges of experiences as well as transfer of methodologies, including among ministries and NGOs, for example the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture and Fisheries and the Peace Corps.

Since 2015, AGRUPAR contributed to both the City Region Food Systems Project of FAO and the RUAF Foundation, which evaluated Quito’s food system. As a result, AGRUPAR staff decided to work towards a food policy for the city in a more systemic sense, within which urban agriculture is a strategic activity.

Through the biofairs and other activities, AGRUPAR promotes healthy diets and sustainability. The Programme created 17 bio-fairs where 105 types of food are offered. Through these, 25% of the produce is commercialized, for about USD 350,000 per year.

Once producers achieve household food security, AGRUPAR encourages them to form microenterprises and trains them in business planning, marketing and accounting. The microenterprises are not only engaged in the production of vegetables, fruits, small animals, fish and ornamental plants, but also in the processing of jams, cookies, yogurt, cheese, drinks and traditional snacks and they also supply products to local food processing companies or to restaurants.

Kauswagan’s From Arms to Farms Programme is one of the 19 components that frame the strategy of the integrated SIKAD peace agenda. The programme addresses sustainable agriculture and food security while providing for the reintegration of ex-combatants through organic farming. Fighting poverty and increasing food security were prioritized. Organic farming was seen as two-fold tool to develop a resilient agricultural system that does not heavily rely on external inputs and at the same time fosters job creation, providing a source of income for the fighters that surrendered.

At the beginning, 200 rebel commanders as well as farmers were introduced to the programme through a series of meetings and workshops, implemented with help from the Philippine army and the Agricultural Training Institute. A key focus was on capacity building. The local government, together with the Assisi Development Foundation, built a school for agriculture. Once the facility was ready, the local government was able to start supporting ex-combatants and their families, as well as local farmers, to learn how to implement organic and agroecological practices.

The history of governmental support to organic farming in Denmark starts in 1987, when the Danish Parliament adopted the Organic Farming Act, which laid down the basic structure of Danish organic farming policy, which still remains today. Permanent subsidies for organic farming were introduced in 1994. Early Organic Action Plans (OAPs) were established from 1995 to 1999.

The current OAP ‘Working together for more organics’ covers the period 2011 to 2020. It was revised and expanded in 2015, following a change of Government. The plan aims at doubling the land area of organic production by 2020 (against a baseline of 2007), and earmarks specific budgets over the period 2015 to 2018 to a set of different action-points. This plan was initiated by the Ministry for Agriculture and developed with the assistance of an external consultant.

One of the strongest components of the plan was to couple the conversion strategy with the gradual phase-out of synthetic inputs. Starting in 2005, the government decided to stop receiving its chemical fertilizer quota from the Government of India and began to gradually reduce subsidies on chemical fertilizers and pesticides at a rate of 10 per cent every year to make them costlier and discourage their purchase. In this way, subsidies were phased-out by 2007-2008. Another measure was to start closing down all sale points and other outlets supplying farmers with synthetic inputs. The state government also started to restrict the import of synthetic inputs and, finally, in 2014 the Sikkim Agricultural, Horticultural Inputs and Livestock Feed Regulation Act was passed, which prohibits the import of any chemical inputs for agriculture and horticulture, and as such constitutes a total ban on the sale and use of chemical pesticides in the state.

During the period between 2010 and 2014, the government earmarked a budget of EUR 6.75 million to support the implementation of the Organic Mission. Recently, the Organic Mission has received also support from central Government schemes, such as the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA).