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How the Securing Water for Food Challenge Seeded My Social Enterprise
In 2013, Reel Gardening applied for and won funding from Securing Water for Food (SWFF) – which helps accelerate technology-based solutions that enable more food to be produced with less water in developing countries – and that money proved to be pivotal in the social enterprise's success. SWFF is funding more innovators this year; the deadline to apply is Monday.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Tags
- lending, partnerships
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The Accidental Social Entrepreneur: A Hippie Ecologist’s Foray into a Costa Rican Business Start-up
Fifteen years ago, American Lisa Bradshaw became a social entrepreneur. But at the time, she didn't know it. When she launched the eco-conscious and locally sourced Green Screen in 2002, no other plant-based insect repellents were on the market in Costa Rica and certification requirements for organic products had just recently been legislated. Here are some of the hard lessons she picked up.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Social Enterprise
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Making Asset Finance Work for Small Scale Agribusiness
A $50 billion dollar investment opportunity currently exists in the agribusiness sector for storage infrastructure, with the potential to raise income in small-scale agribusiness by 80-140%.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Thinking Outside the Bag: Bringing Together Private Packaging Firms, Public Procurement to Feed More Hungry People
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) conservatively estimates that 1 percent of all food aid shipped every year is lost to factors like spoilage or physical damage. That’s enough to feed about 200,000 families for a month — $15 million lost each year. This summer, USAID, USDA and American packaging companies are running an experiment with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to understand which kinds of food aid packaging may better prevent spoilage.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Smarter Farming Could Cut Hunger in Drought-Hit Southern Africa
Southern African farmers facing hunger as a result of worsening drought know a lot about climate change but lack the resources to put solutions that work into place, agriculture and development researchers say.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Drugs Take Back Seat to Seeds at Bayer With Monsanto Acquisition
In the wake of its $66 billion-acquisition of Monsanto, Bayer risks starving its lucrative drugs business of the resources it needs to grow.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
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Implementing Market Systems Programs in Fragile Contexts
Many farmers operating in a market system broken by conflict have been propped up by global humanitarian efforts. However, Andy Hunter, a market systems practitioner, says that replacing essential commercial services with donor-funded direct delivery options is a market distortion that ultimately ensures a complete collapse of a functional market system.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Root Capital and The MasterCard Foundation to Increase Incomes for 300,000 Farmers in West Africa
Impact investing pioneer Root Capital (www.RootCapital.org) announced today at the African Green Revolution Forum a new partnership with The MasterCard Foundation (www.MastercardFdn.org) that will help raise incomes for over 300,000 smallholder farmers in West Africa. The Foundation has committed $5.2 million to Root Capital over five years to support early-stage agricultural businesses that generate transformational impact in rural communities in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Senegal.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa