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Agricultural Mobile Finance: Understanding patterns of daily life at the BoP to leverage market solutions
The growth of mobile technology can lead to disruptive business model innovations in many sectors. One such innovation is agricultural mobile finance that can benefit all the participants in the field-to-fork value chain. But connecting farmers to formal banking on their mobile phones will require multi-stakeholder alliances, market research and an end-user design approach, says Lee Babcock.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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Financial inclusion: India too may learn from US weather insurance firm ClimateCorp’s model
ClimateCorp is actually a very interesting company which straddles an intersection between technology and retail financial services in an innovative way. Moreover, its approach holds an important lesson for us in India. ClimateCorp is a provider of weather insurance. However, it does so in a retail, online, productised and data-driven way.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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How to Make Markets Work for the Poor: … And measure the results
There is little hope of escaping poverty if markets don’t provide the poor with opportunities to increase their income through access to goods, services and employment opportunities. Making Markets Work for the Poor (M4P) is a facilitative approach to poverty reduction that seeks to understand where market systems are failing to benefit the poor, and how to take action to set them right.
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- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
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‘Market Relationships’ that Stand the Test of Time: A Q&A with TechnoServe’s Simon Winter on progress and peril in Ag development
TechnoServe is a nonprofit that is squarely focused on profits ... for low-income farmers and small businesses, that is. Simon Winter, senior vice president of development, says once market relationships are built and skill-building strengthened, sourcing costs from smallholders can absorbed in the cost of the goods being sold.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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Sustainability Certification Dramatically Improves Smallholder Farms’ Access to Credit, New Study Finds
Smallholder farmers suffer from a lack of credit access, but sustainability certification can help change that, according to a new study published by the Rainforest Alliance and funded by the Citi Foundation.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Sustainable Farming Needs Sustainable Finance: How Rainforest Alliance helps the environment by helping farmers get loans
Lenders consider agriculture to be particularly risky. Farms are often located in remote areas, crops are vulnerable to pests and unpredictable weather, and prices are susceptible to rapid changes. To help address these challenges, the Rainforest Alliance launched its Sustainable Finance Initiative, which helps farmers and SMEs access different types of loans.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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USDA, TechnoServe Sign 3-Year, $15M Grant Supporting Cashew Farmers
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and TechnoServe intend to enter into a three-year grant agreement to support small-scale cashew producers, processing factories and the Government of Mozambique’s ongoing efforts to reduce poverty. This $15 million Food for Progress-funded project will support the cashew industry by harnessing global market demand for premium cashew kernel and addressing obstacles throughout the value chain, including in the areas of inputs, production, processing and marketing. In total, this project will support 30,000 smallholder cashew farmers by increasing their productivity and competitiveness as well as connecting them to new markets.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Indonesian farmers need innovative financing to boost productivity
The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin Indonesia) is calling for better access to finance for farmers to help increase their productivity.
- Categories
- Agriculture