The most effective strategies for reducing poverty are those that raise the economic returns to the productive assets that the poor use to make their livelihoods, specifically their labor and, in rural areas, their land. This paper argues that investing in social protection for farmers can raise the productivity of their labor and farmland, and is therefore an investment in poverty reduction and pro-poor economic growth, but that the social protection agenda has so far failed to engage seriously with the opportunities for building synergies with agriculture. The paper also identifies linkages between social safety nets and agriculture, firstly by sketching the conceptual evolution from ‘safety nets’ to ‘social protection’, then by examining synergies and conflicts between social protection and agricultural policy, next considering how social protection was delivered to farmers in the past, and the limitations for African farmers of the ‘new social protection agenda’. Section 3 disaggregates alternative social protection instruments that can contribute to agricultural growth into Sen’s four ‘entitlement’ categories – production, labor, trade and transfers.