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Rwanda: Why Farmers Are Loyal to Micro-Finance Institutions
Rwandans have hailed the role of micro-finance institutions just as Kigali is hosting a global financial inclusion summit starting today.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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A Supply Chain Overhaul To Boost Coffee Farmers’ Income 400%
This is about a social enterprise on a mission to reinvent the coffee supply chain, giving farmers a bigger and more equitable piece of the action.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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In Coffee, Avoiding ‘Great’ Being the Enemy of ‘Good’: The fair-trade model isn’t perfect, but it provides an essential foundation for improving livelihoods
The Fair Trade, Employment, and Poverty Reduction project recently released a widely discussed study that asserts fair-trade practices do not help the poorest agricultural workers. While enthused to see new research into the effectiveness of the fair-trade system, Sustainable Harvest’s Jorge Cuevas takes issue with its conclusions, particularly when it comes to coffee.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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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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Social Lending for Smallholders: Opportunities to support social lenders in closing the smallholder agricultural finance gap
The global demand for food is increasing, but the smallholder farmers who could help meet that demand lack the funds to invest in productivity and connect to markets. And many of the businesses that aggregate smallholders lack access to credit. Social lenders are one solution, says Laura Goldman, in discussing the Initiative for Smallholder Finance’s new guide to investing in or funding the sector.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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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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SMART-er Ways to Plant Profitable Crops
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When you’re a subsistence farmer in drought-stricken regions of East Africa, gambling on what crop to plant is a life-and-death wager for your family. Ellen Metzger, with Village Enterprise, details the organization’s new SMART system - an Android phone enabled program designed to help farmers in Uganda and Kenya make planting decisions based on what’s likely to be most profitable.- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Six Foods You Thought You Knew: The complicated past of our newly favorite foods
The latest fad foods - luscious pomegranates, nutrient-packed quinoa, and refreshing coconut water - have complicated pasts. Farmers and communities that depend on western appetites must contend with global consumption trends, international conflict and climate change. Here’s the farm-to-fork backstory for six of our favorite foods.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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