Built to be infrastructure, not a project.
Where the idea comes from.
Across Africa, schools sit on land that produces nothing while their students face hunger and the surrounding community lacks agricultural work. The idea behind SFN is simple: that land is an asset, and with professional management it can produce food, income, jobs and learning at the same time.
What has been missing is not land, labour or demand. It is the operating layer that connects them: assessment standards, farm infrastructure, crop planning against real buyers, financial controls and honest measurement.
The long-term vision.
A model that can be replicated across thousands of schools and tens of thousands of acres in Africa, operated to consistent standards and evaluated against published evidence.
That vision is an ambition, not an achievement. SFN is currently running a two-school pilot to test whether the model repeats. The pace of expansion will be set by what the evidence shows.
Principles that guide the model.
Operational, not theoretical
SFN operates farms directly. Claims are grounded in fields, records and harvests.
African-rooted
Designed for African contexts, with African institutions and communities as partners and decision-makers.
Commercially disciplined, mission-led
Crops are planned against real demand. The mission is funded by production, not goodwill alone.
Technology-enabled, not technology-first
The operating platform serves the farms. The farms do not exist to demonstrate software.
Evidence-led
Verified results, operational records, targets and estimates are always labelled and never mixed.
Honest about uncertainty
The pilot exists to find out what works. Failures will be reported alongside successes.
Matthew Benjamin
Matthew founded School Farm Network to build the operating infrastructure that turns unused school land into productive farms. He leads the current pilot directly, from site assessment through crop cycles to school benefit delivery.
A wider leadership team, advisors and governance structures will be announced here as they are formally appointed. SFN works with specialist implementation partners who remain independent organisations.