Smallholder Adaptive Farming and Biodiversity Network (SAFBIN)SAFBIN is a regional action research programme in South Asia aiming at building resilience of smallholder farmers to climate change and natural disasters while conserving nature and ensuring food security and sustainable income.

SAFBIN (Strengthening Adaptive Farming in Bangladesh, India and Nepal) began its journey in 2009, when local Caritas organisations in Bangladesh, India and Nepal joined forces to tackle the development challenges facing smallholder farmers. Two years later, Caritas Austria stepped in to help mobilise funding, and the initiative grew into a five-year programme co-financed with the European Union. On the ground, it was carried out by Caritas Bangladesh, Caritas India, and Caritas Nepal, working alongside BOKU University in Vienna and local research partners including BRRI and LI-BIRD1.

The idea at its core was simple: let farmers lead the research themselves. It worked. More than 10.000 smallholder farmers across South Asia put the approach into practice on their own land, tackling climate change and food security challenges directly – and in process, filling a gap in research and extension support that had rarely reached smallholders before.

That early success didn’t mark the end of the story; it marked the beginning of a much bigger one. When the EU co-financed programme concluded in 2016, Caritas organisations in Pakistan and Sri Lanka joined the effort, extending SAFBIN across the whole of South Asia. Encouraged by this momentum, directors of Caritas organisations from all five countries, together with Caritas Asia, decided to take the programme further still — bringing in new partners including CRS, Cordaid, Caritas Switzerland, Caritas Luxembourg, and Caritas Italiana, and renaming it the Smallholder Adaptive Farming and Bio-Diversity Network to reflect its wider ambition: greater resilience to climate change and disasters, stronger food and nutritional security, less poverty, and better access to rights, entitlements, markets and income.

Today, SAFBIN works across Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with Caritas Austria and Caritas Finland still supporting it every step of the way. What started as a project shared between three countries has since grown into a programme spanning five — and, increasingly, a movement carried forward by the farmers themselves. We invite like-minded organisations to join us in taking it further.