For ten years the SAA has collaborated with Global 2000 in finding ways to raise the productivity of African farmers, helping them to increase food production, organize to get credit, acquire inputs, and market their harvests more successfully. SG2000 works in countries that have food insecurity and where the government invites them and agrees to cooperate in the projects. The group also tries to work with governments that are committed to agricultural development. This is important because the organization begins working through government agencies to train extension agents, so that the new technologies will be retained when the SG2000 project closes. The primary classroom is the demonstration plot.
Farmers gain a realistic idea of what the labor and costs the new technology entails.
They almost invariably harvest two to three times the yield they formerly enjoyed at less cost and labor. Farm families in the area are invited to field days and the ideas and technology are taken up by more smallholders every year. Then SG2000 moves on. During the last 14 years SG2000 has helped national extension personnel and small-scale farmers to establish 600,000 demonstration plots in more than a dozen African countries.