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A Roadmap to Food Security: Linking Geodata with Financial Inclusion to Support Smallholders
Smallholder farmers produce a staggering 70 percent of the world’s food, making them essential to food security. Geodata applications have been shown to improve these farmers’ yields and even boost their financial access – one of the main obstacles to increasing production. To help tap into these benefits, NpM’s Innovator’s Challenge brought together 17 tech companies with geodata-based solutions for smallholder financial inclusion. NpM director Josien Sluijs discusses the winning companies, and the broader potential of geodata-based innovation.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance, Social Enterprise, Technology
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Press release: Sistema.bio attracts funding from Hivos-Triodos Fund
Hivos-Triodos Fund joins a group world-class impact and venture capital investors that support Sistema.bio’s mission to bring technology, training and financing to the smallholder farmers around the world.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Investing
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20,000 Ethiopian smallholders targeted with climate smart technology
CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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World Bank’s $172 million loan to make farming viable in Andhra Pradesh, India
World Bank has signed an agreement with the government of India and government of Andhra Pradesh to extend a loan of $172.2 million to help turn farming in Andhra a financially viable activity.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- South Asia
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The Advantages of Boots on the Ground: Is it Really Possible to Digitize the Last Mile in Smallholder Agriculture?
Mobile connections, big data and technologies like artificial intelligence are creating new opportunities to serve smallholder farmers with financial and other services. But since many farmers still lack reliable internet and mobile connectivity, businesses serving these customers must still leverage both physical and digital tools, says Hamilton McNutt at Strategic Impact Advisors. He explores the different ways some businesses are combining digital innovations with an on-the-ground presence to solve the challenges of last-mile access.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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How Do We Define ‘Farmer’?: Why Outdated Perceptions are Complicating Data-Driven Agriculture
Who qualifies as a ‘farmer’? This sounds like a simple question for any agricultural intervention, but it is fraught with complexity. Sometimes farm owners live in the city, hiring caretakers to farm their land. Other times, women do most of the actual farming, but their husbands collect the income. Even the definition of ‘smallholder’ is often ambiguous. As efforts to digitize farming data gather momentum, Bobbi Gray at Grameen Foundation explores some ways to clarify this picture – and the challenges this will involve.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Press release: ICMIF and CIC launch new project to cover over 250,000 Kenyan farmers with livestock microinsurance
Tom Gitogo, Group CEO, CIC confirms the proposed impact of the project: “Over the next five years, we plan to issue over 250,000 livestock microinsurance policies to previously uninsured low-income farmers, equating to 500,000 cows insured. CIC will scale up our livestock microinsurance product by partnering with dairy cooperative associations as part of a holistic approach to improving the lives and livelihoods of low-income farmers and their families”.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Meet The Social Entrepreneur Behind Africa’s “Uber For The Farm”
How do you sell agriculture as a meaningful career for young people? Hello Tractor, founded in 2014, is helping illuminate one path: By cutting down on the labor and the drudgery long associated with farming, they’re making it more attractive and more lucrative for the next generation.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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