From the start, ATFI is focused on supporting marginal producers or smallholder farmers who decided to engage in sustainable agriculture-organic farming.  In the case of Negros Island, the great majority of the rural poor are farmworkers in sugarcane plantations and a significant section of them availed of land reform. ATFI provides support services to these agrarian reform beneficiaries (ARBs) to enable them to make their farms productive, viable and sustainable.

 

ATFI operates in the municipalities and towns of Negros Occidental where agrarian reform beneficiaries are concentrated. These are in E.B. Magalona, Murcia, Bago City, La Carlota City, La Castellana and Don Salvador Benedicto.

 

The whole agrarian reform communities have a total of about 118,438 beneficiaries in 161,360 hectares. ATFI currently provides services to 549 agrarian reform beneficiaries (274 women, 275men) organized in 13 small producers’ organizations (SPOs). These also include 3,294 members of households in their communities as indirect beneficiaries of ATFI services. ATFI establishes partnership with marginal farmers who opted for sustainable agriculture and have decided to collectively manage their farms and share the gains and profits equitably.