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Coffee shops, farmers and a banker team up to save Latin American coffee
Coffee trees in Central and South America are in danger. They have always been vulnerable to a disease called leaf rust, or la roya in Spanish. But now a warmer, wetter climate is creating the worst outbreak in a generation.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
- Tags
- impact investing
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Why mobile money can work in rural areas
Mobile money is an important means of facilitating the transfer of funds across rural areas in Africa, but services are often designed to function in a specific way – which might not be to the benefit of all who are making use of them.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Joining Forces to Fight the Leaf Rust Epidemic Devastating Latin American Coffee
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (GMCR), the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) of the InterAmerican Development Bank and Skoll Foundation announce today support for the non-profit agricultural lender Root Capital ‘s Coffee Farmer Resilience Initiative. The initiative is a collaborative venture designed to stabilize supply chains by investing in coffee farmers at the base of the value chain, who are on the front lines of battling the leaf rust epidemic in Latin America.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Latin America
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Can data-driven solutions change Africa’s agriculture sector?
Despite accounting for 65 percent of the labor force and making up 32 percent of its gross domestic product, Africa’s agricultural sector gets less than one percent of commercial bank loans.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Coca-Cola, Partners Team up to Solve Major Global Problem
Coca-Cola recently announced a cross-industry collaboration to deliver safe drinking water to global communities that struggle to access this most basic resource. A partnership with Qualcomm subsidiary Qualcomm Technologies, IBM, and NRG Energy, among others, the new EKOCENTER partnership will provide a fundamental necessity to rural communities around the world. That's great for people, but is it any good for business?
- Categories
- Agriculture
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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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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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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