Beyond Beneficiaries: Seeing Smallholder Farmers as Strategists
From Beneficiaries to Decision-Makers
In rural development, smallholder farmers are typically portrayed as vulnerable beneficiaries in need of support. “While well-intended, this framing doesn’t match what we see in the field,” says Francyelly Lasmar Balduino, Co-country Manager at HRNS in Brazil. Victor Komakech, Climate Change Coordinator at HRNS in Uganda, agrees: “This dominant narrative must change because it ignores the fact that farmers already have extensive knowledge and experience.”
This blogpost therefore proposes a reframing: What if we saw farmers as strategists – decision-makers navigating complex systems under uncertainty and with limited resources?
Framing farmers as “strategists” acknowledges the complexity of their daily choices: They manage climate and market uncertainties, diversify crops and income sources to mitigate risks, and balance short-term needs with long-term investments. “These choices are rarely reactive,” Balduino says. “They are shaped by constant observation, learning, adaptation, and deep knowledge of the land.” Much of this happens without safety nets or buffers. At the same time, seeing farmers as strategists does not deny vulnerability. Rather, it highlights how smallholders act strategically within vulnerability and structural constraints.
Recognizing farmers as strategic actors is not just a change in language. It is a change in mindset.
Examples from the Field: Decisions Farmers Navigate
This perspective becomes visible in farmers’ everyday trade-offs:
- Sell now or store: Sell coffee immediately to cover school fees or debts, or store it and wait for a better price while risking quality loss and urgent cash needs.
- Cooperative or trader: Deliver through a cooperative for longer-term benefits, or sell to a trader who pays cash immediately.
- Hire labor or rely on family: Hire pickers during peak harvest, or rely on family labor and risk quality penalties if cherries are picked too late. As Komakech notes, “labour availability and timing during critical farming seasons is a constant constraint.”
- Cash crops or food crops: Prioritize coffee for income, or dedicate land and labor to food crops for food security and risk reduction.
- Household allocation decisions: “One challenge that outsiders often underestimate is the constant balance between farm investments and family needs,” Balduino says. Farm investments compete with school fees, healthcare costs, and household needs.
- Adoption of regenerative practices: As weather extremes and pest pressure increase, farmers decide when to renovate aging plots, which varieties to replant, and which practices to adopt to strengthen climate resilience (shade trees, intercropping, mulching). “These changes involve weighing initial costs, labour requirements, and expected returns over time,” Balduino notes.
Narratives Shape Practice: Implications for Development Cooperation
Seeing farmers as strategists is more than a change in wording – it changes practice. Words are not neutral: Whether we call people “beneficiaries” or “decision-makers” shapes expectations and power dynamics. It influences whose expertise is recognized, what is defined as the problem, and what kinds of outcomes become visible (and fundable).
This shift has immediate implications for program design. Instead of “How do we deliver solutions?” the question becomes: “How do we reduce the cost of good decisions?” That moves the focus away from “changing farmers” to reducing friction, closing information gaps, and addressing power imbalances. “Our role is to build on what farmers are already doing, strengthening their systems rather than imposing external solutions,” Komakech says.
Communication and partnerships follow the same logic: moving away from top-down instruction toward farmer-centered collaboration that starts with people’s perspectives, values local knowledge, and adapts to local realities. As Balduino puts it, “Moving from a logic of aid to a logic of alliance means combining what farmers already know with the support systems they need and deserve.“
What This Look Likes in Practice at HRNS
“At HRNS, we have intentionally moved away from beneficiary language and refer to farmers as project partners, acknowledging their central role in shaping, implementing, and sustaining change,” Komakech says. This is reflected in HRNS’ Theory of Change, collaboration with farmers, and evaluation approach.
HRNS Theory of Change: Farms as Family Businesses
HRNS’ Theory of Change goes beyond coffee production and aims to strengthen farming families in taking a proactive, informed, and self-determined role in shaping their livelihoods. In practice, this means improving the conditions that make good decisions possible: effective farm and household management, financial literacy, and access to fair markets, affordable financing, inputs, and technical support.
It also means closing information gaps. Farmers often lack reliable market data, localized weather and climate forecasts, information on emerging pests and diseases, and clear pathways to value addition. “Closing these gaps could greatly strengthen farmers’ ability to make informed decisions,” Balduino explains.
The Theory of Change also frames farming as strategic risk management. It promotes climate-smart practices and diversified production systems as resilience strategies against price volatility, climate shocks, and pest and disease pressure.
Another key element is supporting farmer organizations as market actors. Strengthening independent, business-oriented, and professionally managed organizations can reduce transaction costs and rebalance bargaining power by improving access to information, finance, inputs, quality control, and bulk marketing.
Finally, the Theory of Change expands who gets to decide. It recognizes that decisions are negotiated within families and across generations, and promotes shared responsibility and joint planning – strengthening the role of women and young people in shaping farm and household choices.
Working with Farmers: Participation Across the Project Cycle
“Adopting this perspective also changes how we collaborate with farmers: It begins with listening,” Balduino explains. HRNS treats each farmer family as a partner, consulting them not only on technical issues but also on their priorities, risk perceptions, needs and long-term aspirations. This positions farmers as co-developers of solutions rather than end users of them.
„At HRNS, we apply participatory approaches throughout the project cycle”, Komakech explains. These include participatory farmer needs assessments to identify farmers’ priorities and development gaps, Farmer Field Schools with curricula shaped by farmers’ priorities, participatory climate risk assessments, and farmer-to-farmer learning through peer visits, model farms, demonstration plots, and Communities of Practice.
Evaluation with Farmers: Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation
HRNS’ evaluation does not only look at outputs – yields, income, and adoption – but also at agency – for example, joint decision-making within households and cooperative effectiveness. In addition, it is not only relevant what is evaluated, but also how.
In Uganda, HRNS is implementing Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation (PM&E) to extend participatory approaches all the way through to evaluation. Traditional M&E can be “extractive”, collecting data in the field for analysis elsewhere. PM&E, by contrast, involves farmers and other stakeholders as co-analysts: They define what to observe, review results, and agree on next steps. This makes learning not only reportable, but also immediately usable – helping reduce information gaps and friction in decision-making.
“Interestingly, PM&E results often align closely with those of conventional evaluations conducted by external experts”, Komakech adds. HRNS has also seen promising outcomes: In Uganda, adoption rates for good agricultural practices were below 50% in previous projects, but with PM&E, they have exceeded 60%.
A Closing Reflection
Balduino concludes: “Recognizing farmers as strategic actors is not just a change in language. It is a change in mindset.” Such mindset shifts take time. HRNS has long worked bottom-up and needs-based, with continuous learning at the center. A guiding question therefore remains: If farmers were in the lead, what would they change first?
Ultimately, this shift in perspective is key to lasting transformation in rural landscapes. As Komakech puts it, viewing farmers as strategists makes interventions “relevant, practical, and sustainable” by strengthening ownership and trust – often translating into higher adoption, stronger institutions, and greater community resilience. Balduino’s experience in Brazil echoes this: “The most meaningful progress has come when producers are not treated as beneficiaries, but as partners who help shape the solutions from the very beginning.”
