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Outgrower Schemes: A pathway to sustainable agriculture
Outgrower schemes, which link networks of unorganized smallholder farmers with domestic and international buyers, have demonstrated win-win potential – but don’t always live up to it. TechnoServe, in Part 1 of a two-part series, details its investigation into the features of effective and sustainable outgrower models.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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Nexthought Monday – Fertilizer as Both Friend AND Foe: How to use them more responsibly, effectively and for farmers – profitably
More than 100 million tons of fertilizers are applied worldwide each year, supplying our planet with plentiful harvests. But that’s only part of the story. At Semilla Nueva, we have a lot of interest in how fertilizers can be used responsibly and sustainably to feed our growing planet and boost farmers’ incomes in the process.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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It’s About Time, It’s Also About Culture: How do varying cultural perspectives about time and productivity impact social enterprises?
Andrea Trice is researching how “soft” factors such as mutual understanding and trust influence the success of a social enterprise. While it’s too early to draw conclusions, Trice notes that it’s difficult to overestimate the role of culture in shaping how each of us thinks and acts, and therefore how businesses succeed or fail.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Social Enterprise
- Tags
- research
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Chocolate at Risk?: Why sustainable finance is crucial to ensuring a steady cocoa supply for the world’s chocolate industry
Smallholder cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire produce 40 percent of the world cocoa supply. Yet the vast majority still live in poverty due to declining productivity, and in the absence of long-term financing opportunities, many have been changing to other crops. Rainforest Alliance’s Helen Roy describes how socially-minded investors are mobilizing capital to help these farmers revive their land.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 2: Infrastructure matters
On the way to introducing a food cart vendor business in Benin, West Africa, MamaCarts has encountered all sorts of problems with sanitation, incorporation and the government. But there’s a positive spin on these infrastructure gaps: Alternative solutions do exist and people circumnavigate these difficulties on a daily basis.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Healthy Foods and New Jobs, Part 1: MamaCarts learns valuable lessons while launching food cart delivery service from scratch
MamaCarts began by pitching an idea at a business plan competition and culminated with receiving a 2013 Rockefeller Foundation Centennial Innovation Challenge Award. That’s all there is to starting a food cart delivery service in Benin, West Africa, right? Wrong.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Health Care, Social Enterprise
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Weekly Roundup – The Indispensable Platform: The growing importance of mobile access to businesses that serve the poor
With over 50 percent of people in the developing world having access to a cell phone, mobile access has become an indispensable platform for businesses and services focused on the BoP. We discuss its impact and potential in this week’s Roundup.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education, Energy, Impact Assessment, Technology, Telecommunications
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Micro-Franchising: How Business-in-a-Box Can Change Development: Why Jibu, a clean water franchise, sees power in local ownership
Micro-franchising lends the emerged market’s corporate advantage to local, emerging market entrepreneurs - propelling local innovations and adaptation. Jibu is piloting this model for clean water distribution. Why co-founder Galen Welsch thinks they may be onto something.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise
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