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Three Steps to Jumpstart Mobile Finance: Step 1 – Researching smallholders’ financial behavior to help them transition to mobile payments
It’s becoming increasingly clear that cash payment schemes are obsolete in the 21st century, says Lee Babcock. And in agriculture, there’s a growing recognition that enabling digital payments to smallholders is a huge opportunity, both for farmers and the mobile finance sector. In this three-part series, Babcock lays out three steps for embedding mobile money into agriculture development at the BoP.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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Chocolate at Risk?: Why sustainable finance is crucial to ensuring a steady cocoa supply for the world’s chocolate industry
Smallholder cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire produce 40 percent of the world cocoa supply. Yet the vast majority still live in poverty due to declining productivity, and in the absence of long-term financing opportunities, many have been changing to other crops. Rainforest Alliance’s Helen Roy describes how socially-minded investors are mobilizing capital to help these farmers revive their land.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment
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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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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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William Warshauer to Join TechnoServe as President and CEO
TechnoServe is pleased to announce that William Warshauer, an experienced nonprofit leader, has been named president and CEO. Will currently serves as chief operating officer of Pact, a $180 million development organization operating in more than 25 countries,
- Categories
- Agriculture
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