The Four-year project, which seeks to promote Sustainable Agriculture Development through collaborative research between academia and civil society, was implemented with the Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana, (PFAG) the Lund's University, Malmo University and University of Cape Coast (UCC).

The two-fold aim of the FOMPO project includes creating an understanding of the emergence, development and outcomes of farmer mobilization for sustainable and smallholder-centered agricultural development in SSA, drawing on evidence from Ghana, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.

It also aims at strengthening action-oriented research capacity for critically engaged research for sustainable agricultural development in participating countries.

The project approach emphasised the scientific and societal benefits of pursuing comparative research based on profound collaboration between academia and civil society.
It involves case-based in-depth fieldwork, theoretically guided by the synthesis approach to social movement studies which highlight the interactions between three core aspects: framing processes, mobilising structures, and political opportunity.

Besides generating practically useful knowledge and advancing theory, the project-built research capacity for critically engaged, collaborative research on social mobilisation around sustainable rural development in South Saharan Africa (SSA).

Mr Bismark Owusu Nortey, Acting Executive Director, PFAG told the Ghana News Agency that the project was initiated to interrogate the issue of how farmer Associations were able to overcome political barriers to sustainable and inclusive agricultural development in SSA countries.

He said this was done by analyzing the conditions for, the development of, and outcomes from farmer based political mobilization in rural areas in Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
He said in Ghana, PFAG was the main farmer group engaged for this assessment over the past four years, of which the key findings were made.
He said the advocacy campaigns were yielding a lot of results in influencing government policies and initiatives to support farmers to produce and feed the country better.

Professor Chad Boda, an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at the Department of Urban Studies, Malmo University, Sweden, speaking on the challenges facing the PFAG as an advocacy organisation, said it included staff and membership stability, diversity in member needs and desires, and different kinds of projects being promoted.