Purchase for Progress – P4P – is the title of the World Food Programme’s (WFP) initiative which aims to offer small-scale farmers in developing countries a new perspective. Within the framework of this project the WFP wants in future to buy the food for food aid in the country in which it is to be distributed to the hungry. 76 million US dollars (USD) have been made available for the next five years, which is the duration of the programme. Most of the funding, 75 million USD, was donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation und the Howard G. Buffett Foundation.
 
The WFP will launch its P4P initiative in 21 countries, of which most are in Africa, two are in Latin America and two are in Asia. In the first year the plan is to buy 40,000 tonnes of food. To put this in perspective, in 2007 the WFP delivered a total of 3.3 million tonnes of food aid, a large part of which was sourced in developing countries. According to the WFP it has spent more than a billion dollars on food purchases in Africa since 2001.
 
Through the P4P programme the WFP wants to help 350,000 farmers in the 21 pilot countries towards a better standard of living.
 
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More information: www.wfp.org