S4P Group’s Farmer Support Centre (FSC) model is a flagship market systems innovation designed to address long-standing gaps in agricultural service delivery for smallholder farmers. The FSCs respond to a core challenge in Uganda’s agricultural sector: farmers often lack coordinated access to quality inputs, reliable advisory services, structured markets, and trusted intermediaries. Rather than addressing these gaps in isolation, the FSC model integrates them into a single, community-anchored system.

Each FSC operates as a one-stop agricultural service hub, led by a trained Business Service Provider (BSP), a local agro-entrepreneur embedded within the farming community. BSPs provide farmers with technical advice, access to certified inputs, production support, aggregation services, and market linkages, while also operating as commercially viable enterprises. This ensures that the model is financially sustainable, locally owned, and scalable beyond donor support.

Through partnerships under initiatives such as USAID/ICAN, S4P has supported the establishment and strengthening of FSCs across Northern, Western, and Eastern Uganda, reaching thousands of farmers with improved services and market opportunities. Beyond productivity gains, the FSC model contributes to income stability, reduced post-harvest losses, improved bargaining power, and stronger local agribusiness ecosystems.