Our Approach

Twin recognises the central role and huge potential of trade in economic and social development. Agricultural trade supports the livelihoods of millions of smallholder producers around the world and in many rural economies represents an important, if not the main, opportunity for income growth and socio-economic development.

Our approach to trade is based on the principles of partnership and ‘acompañamiento’, an expression in Spanish that describes a long-term relationship based on solidarity and a shared vision and mission.

Twin and Twin Trading pride themselves on being strong market-facing intermediaries: understanding and participating in the marketplace and also with a strong understanding of the realities of producer organisations.

Twin’s model for change

Twin’s principle focus is on democratic smallholder organisations - we see these as key engines of rural growth and also important contributors to a vibrant civil society.

Twin’s work aims to help producer organisations to progress to a stage when they can actively participate in mainstream markets from a position of relative power and where their voice is heard in local and international policy discourse.

This inevitably involves a series of stages of development, for example:

• helping farmers to organise;
• equipping them with business basics;
• facilitating access to value-added markets;
• and helping to build the capacity of producer organisations to maintain and develop these opportunities.

For the more mature organisations our engagement usually focuses on developing autonomy and resilience, e.g. building their capacity to act independently of external support and manage, for example, the risks of increasingly volatile markets and climate change.

Where solid foundations have been established, Twin will seek to engage strategically and support initiatives to increase the power of producers and be transformative.  These strategic interventions may include moving up the value chain (processing, marketing, developing brands) or creating alliances with others to increase producers voice and influence in the market place or over policy.

Twin seeks to influence power dynamics within households to help ensure that benefits from trade contribute not just to meeting immediate needs but have the potential to contribute to longer-term and strategic advances, for example, investing in the future, supporting diversification and potentially moving out of agricultural all together.