Partnerships for Resilience: Supporting Faster Recovery for Farmers After Climate Shocks
Learn how WFP and the John Deere Foundation are enabling smallholder farmers’ access to financial instruments and services for greater impact
By Miranda Stobbs, Ishank Gorla, Elisa Choi, Chloe Gueguen, Natasha DSouza
Smallholder farmers produce a significant share of the food in developing countries, yet they remain among the most vulnerable to poverty, climate shocks and food insecurity. Limited access to financial services continues to constrain their ability to invest in productive activities, protect their livelihoods and build resilience, ultimately undermining food security.
To address this challenge, WFP’s Inclusive Risk Financing (IRF) work expands access to a suite of financial solutions, including insurance, savings, and credit, complemented by interventions that improve smallholder farmers’ market access, promote climate-adaptive practices, create employment opportunities and strengthen resilient food value chains.
However, no single organization can fix these challenges alone. By working with governments, insurers, technology providers, and communities, WFP and the John Deere Foundation are helping build systems that last; systems that put farmers first and give them a fairer chance to recover, adapt, and thrive in a changing climate.
The Challenge
In 2025, an estimated 318 million people across 68 countries experienced acute food insecurity, driven by the compounding effects of conflict, economic shocks, weather‑related disasters, and persistently high inflation. As weather-related shocks become more frequent and severe, strategies for reducing and mitigating risks are essential to overcome hunger, achieve food security, and enhance resilience.
Over the past decade, WFP has unlocked access to IRF solutions for over 15 million people as part of a comprehensive risk management approach to build resilient food value chains, delivering a cumulative US$1.27 billion in financial protection. By providing tailored financial services, such as insurance, savings and loans, WFP helps vulnerable communities, particularly smallholder farmers, better manage shocks and strengthen their resilience.
In 2025, WFP’s IRF programmes supported more than 1.8 million people across 21 countries, delivering over US$270 million in financial protection, with premiums totaling US$13 million. Insurance payouts of US$4.9 million following extreme weather events reached around 760,000 people. WFP also provided technical assistance to the governments of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Zambia on the design and use of insurance solutions, helping strengthen national and private‑sector capacity to lead climate risk insurance and broader IRF initiatives.
Despite this progress, two major challenges remain:
First, in many contexts, insurance premium collection and payouts still rely heavily on cash. This reflects limited access among farmers to formal financial services; such as bank accounts and mobile wallets, as well as insufficient digital innovation among some insurance partners to build transaction platforms and stronger digital ecosystems. Cash‑based systems slow down support to farmers and their families, as manual distribution reduces the effectiveness and timeliness of payouts. Fragmented digital systems further limit efficiency and accessibility, especially in rural and underserved areas.
Second, limited national institutional capacity continues to be a major barrier to establishing, embedding, and sustaining IRF within government systems. Without stronger government ownership and technical, operational, and structural capabilities, externally supported initiatives risk remaining fragmented or short‑term. Institutionalization is a long‑term process that requires deliberate policy choices, sustained capacity development, and clear public ownership. Strengthening national institutions, together with robust digital insurance systems, is essential to ensuring scalable, nationally owned solutions that can build long‑term resilience for smallholder farmers.
The Solution — ARISE: Advancing Rural Insurance, Strengthening Institutions and Empowerment
With support from the John Deere Foundation, WFP is tackling the major barriers that limit farmers’ access to financial services. The John Deere Foundation’s support has helped WFP build upon digital systems that enable faster insurance payouts and strengthen national institutions so they can expand financial inclusion. This work is expected to help scale risk‑financing solutions to reach up to 4 million people in 25 countries by 2027 and support governments and financial services providers in integrating these tools into their own systems.
Component 1: Digitalizing the Inclusive Insurance Customer Journey
This component aims to strengthen digital ecosystems in five countries — Senegal, Haiti, Zambia, Madagascar and Bangladesh — to ensure efficient, timely, and transparent insurance delivery and distribution to 210,000 smallholder farmers. By digitalising the insurance customer journey from enrolment to claims and payouts, WFP and partners aim to reduce delays, improve transparency and enable faster recovery following climate shocks.
This work is co-created with technology partners, insurers and national stakeholders to ensure solutions are accessible, context-specific, and integrated into existing national systems.
Component 2: Strengthening Government Institutional Capacity
Under this component, WFP will support the integration of insurance products into the government of Ethiopia’s Input Voucher System to expand access to millions of farmers. Through technical collaboration and capacity strengthening, WFP is supporting Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture to enhance national capacity to manage inclusive risk financing systems, promote financial inclusion and strengthen climate resilience for rural populations.
The Impact
Since 2009, IRF has demonstrated the value of strong public- and private-sector partnerships in expanding access to inclusive insurance for vulnerable populations. The model has been successfully implemented and scaled globally. Building on this foundation, the current initiative, supported by John Deere, is projected to reach 1.6 million smallholder farmers by the end of 2026.
Faster and more reliable payouts due to digitization will enable farmers to protect assets, invest in recovery and maintain food security after climate shocks. At the same time, stronger national institutions improve sustainability and reduce long-term dependence on externally managed systems. Digitalisation also enhances efficiency, accountability and access, particularly for remote communities that are often excluded from formal financial services.
As climate risks continue to challenge food security and livelihoods, inclusive and scalable risk‑financing solutions are more than essential. Collaboration enables WFP and its partners to design programmes that are resilient and locally owned, while the digitalization of programmes such as Inclusive Risk Financing and the strengthening of national institutions show how partnership can deliver real, measurable impact.
Food systems are strongest when smallholder farmers are better protected, better prepared, and more able to withstand future shocks.
