-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
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
-
Climate Change Predicted to Halve Coffee-Growing Area That Supports 120m People
Climate change is going to halve the area suitable for coffee production and impact the livelihoods of more than 120 million of the world’s poorest people who rely on the coffee economy, according to a new report by the Climate Institute, commissioned by Fairtrade Australia & New Zealand.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
-
The AgTech Pedestal Problem: How to Bring Innovation Down to Earth
Without the knowledge to operate it and systems to maintain it, technology is a liability rather than an asset to a farmer. It cannot work in isolation. We must be careful not to place AgTech on a pedestal; AgTech can only be successful if it is grounded in the realities of the developing world farmer. But we're already seeing several examples of that emerging from "Silicon Plateau."
- Categories
- Agriculture, Social Enterprise, Technology
- Tags
- research
Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter, "NextBillion Notes"
Published each Wednesday, our e-newsletter features NextBillion's latest original articles, along with a selection of news, jobs, bizdev opportunities and events from our recent coverage — and regular conference ticket giveaways.
We respect your privacy. Your information is safe and will never be shared.
Don't miss out. Subscribe today.