Forest business incubation: the heartbeat of healthy landscape livelihoods

Forest producers and their local organisations often lack the skills they need to maximise sustainable business opportunities that reduce poverty, improve climate resilience and mitigate climate change. Although people working as small forest and farm producers organise to sell their products together, building the skills to develop their businesses in often remote areas is costly. Larger forest and farm producer organisations (FFPOs) that aggregate, process and market their members’ products are well placed to also finance and support their members’ skills development so they can grow sustainable businesses from their landscape-based livelihoods. This briefing explores how these FFPOs do this and how donors and national governments can increase their support to help them upscale this role.