The purpose of this document is to provide guidance to sustainable commodity production practitioners from government, civil society and business on how to assess and strengthen collaboratively farmer support systems in order to achieve the broader goal of improving the lives of commodities producers and their communities and protecting high value forest and important vulnerable ecosystems. It is intended to:

• Facilitate multi-stakeholder collaboration for systemic change leading to joint diagnosis, investigation and agreement on systemic solutions to strengthening existing farmer support systems;
• Support the elaboration of updated collective vision, strategies and implementation plan for national/sub-national farmer support systems

There are four stages proposed to the process of engaging multiple stakeholders on Farmer Support Systems

1. Preparation consisting of establishing the multi-stakeholder dialogue (building on existing forums/platforms where they exist); 
2. Assessment of the existing farmer support systems performance as it relates to a specific commodity; this consists of a quantitative exercise (diagnosis study) followed by a qualitative one (diagnosis scorecard);
3. Collaborative inputs into decision-making to provide key recommendations for strengthening existing systems leading to concrete outcomes (e.g. farmer support implementation plan and budget);
4. Joint implementation and monitoring of the farmer support implementation plan