-
The BIG Smallholder Opportunity: ‘Growing Business with Smallholders’ practitioner workshop is Nov. 19-20 in Germany
It’s clear that smallholders are important partners for improving food security when considering that, with 500 million farms worldwide, they cultivate most of the land in developing countries. To achieve food security, effective mechanisms to equip smallholders with the right inputs and tools.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
Sisal board introduces mobile decorticators to revolutionise farming
Way back in the early 60s, the sisal industry was the best organised commercial agriculture in East Africa with Tanzania leading in terms of production, followed by Brazil.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
Nigeria: UN, Brazil Sign U.S.$20 Million Pact to Help Farmers in Developing Countries
A $20 million agreement signed during the week by the United Nations and Brazil will seek to transfer the expertise of the South American country to support cotton farmers in developing economies.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
-
World Food Day: Availability, Access and Use : Stronger agricultural inputs, tools and financing are key
In much of the world populations are expanding dramatically with demand for food increasing in-step. Food security is composed of three facets; availability, access and use, and in many of the countries where we invest we see challenges across all three. At Acumen Fund we believe that a critical way to improve food security is by improving smallholder farmers’ access to stronger agricultural inputs, tools and financing. In a sector where innovation abounds, millions of smallholder farmers are still struggling to produce decent crop yields, resulting in poor nutrition, bad health and stagnant growth. For the last decade Acumen has been addressing this issue through a series of innovative investments in agriculture in Africa and South Asia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
-
Partners in Food Solutions, USAID and TechnoServe Expand Partnership to Improve Food Security in Africa
$15 million Public-Private Partnership Agreement will enable consortium of global food companies to help transform food processing through its 500+ corporate volunteer network
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Tags
- nutrition
-
How Entrepreneurs Can Fight Drug Traffickers
There’s nothing like attending the heady, exhilarating Clinton Global Initiative to get me out of the operational trenches of entrepreneurship for social change. But this year, I was distracted by a conversation taking place just down the street at the UN General Assembly—on drug trafficking.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Impact Assessment
- Region
- Latin America
-
Sweetening the Deal: Empowering Peruvian Chocolatiers
From Oct. 2011 to July 2012, I worked in Tarapoto, a small Peruvian jungle town in the San Martin province. San Martin was known in the 1980s and ’90s as a hotbed of illicit coca production feeding the drug trade, but years of development efforts have since helped to make legitimate agriculture the engine keying the region’s rapid economic growth.
- Categories
- Agriculture
-
The $450 Billion Opportunity: Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance
As population growth and rising incomes create unprecedented demand for food, multinational companies increasingly rely on smallholders to secure their supply of agricultural commodities. As a result, smallholders present a compelling opportunity for buyers, lenders, and other actors in the agricultural value chain. However, smallholder production is often characterized by low yields, low quality, poor linkages, and little access to finance. A Dalberg report released Wednesday called “Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance” suggests that with increased financing, farmers can improve their yields and products and in some cases double their income.
- Categories
- Agriculture