WFO: Serving as The Biggest Independent Global Farmers’ Voice

The World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) is a member-driven international organisation bringing together national farmers’ organisations and agricultural cooperatives from across all continents. WFO represents and gives voice to the diverse community of farmers worldwide in key international policy processes and multilateral fora, where decisions about agriculture, food systems, and rural development are made, ensuring that global decision-making on agriculture and food systems reflects and integrates farmers’ knowledge, realities, and experiences on the ground.

To be the Biggest Independent Global Farmers’ Voice, fostering the economic viability of farming activities, improving the livelihood conditions of farmers, their families and rural communities, and strengthening the contribution of farmers in tackling the global challenges humankind faces.

To inform international decision-making with farmer-driven, science-based policies and solutions, so that the most pressing challenges for farmers worldwide can be addressed starting from their real needs, enabling them to better contribute to a sustainable future for agriculture and the planet.

WFO’s work is guided by the core values of inclusion, solidarity, democracy, and independence.

Our Strategic Direction

In light of global milestones such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement, WFO adopted a Strategic Framework 2018–2028, first endorsed in 2017 and updated in 2023, to guide the Organisation’s long-term vision and priorities.

Within this framework are two key political reference documents: the Farmer-Driven Climate Change Agenda (2018) and the Farmers’ Route Declaration (2019), which reaffirm WFO’s commitment to a farmer-driven approach, placing farmers at the centre of the global agricultural agenda not just as beneficiaries, but as solution-providers.

In 2017, the WFO General Assembly approved its 2018-2028 Strategic Framework in Helsinki, Finland. However, the world has undergone significant changes since then, and so has our Organisation.
Currently, from the political perspective, multilateralism is under unprecedented pressure, while the economic environment is experiencing a stronger and stronger concentration of power in value chains. Moreover, the pressure on natural resources such as water and biodiversity and the impacts of climate change have added to the numerous challenges that farmers face, contributing to a growing sense of uncertainty.
We have grown stronger, positioning ourselves as the Biggest Independent Global Farmers’ Voice, the reference Organisation for farmers’ representation in the international space. Furthermore, we have interpreted our core values of inclusion and democracy, leading to establishing a Solidarity Fund to support WFO Members experiencing financial troubles.
We are also working hard to give their deserved space to our young farmers through a new initiative called WFO Young.
Given these changes, the time has come for WFO to review the strategic framework at its mid-term implementation path to enhance the responsiveness of the Organisation to these and future developments.

In May 2019, in Luxembourg, the General Assembly of the World Farmers’ Organisation (WFO) approved the “Farmers’ Route Declaration”, a statement that looks to promote a real “farmer-driven approach” to tackle the global challenges humankind faces, highlighting the path that the farmers of the world are already building and following to achieve a more sustainable future for all humankind.
The “Farmers’ Route Declaration” reaffirms the principle of the “Farmers Driven Climate Change Agenda”, adopted by the WFO Members in 2018 in Moscow, Russia, to enhance the position of the farmers in the global political dialogue on agriculture, starting from the climate negotiations.