Seminar Video: What can companies do to include and support women farmers?
PROFILE Esther Ngumbi is an author, researcher, educator, mentor, speaker, and a champion for change around the issues of hunger, gender, education, youth activism, agriculture, sustainability, and public service. She works as an Assistant Professor, Entomology and African American Studies, at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. She is the founder of organizations that […]
A new dawn for women smallholders in India
The work of a female farmer begins well before dawn, and continues well after dusk, and yet in terms of empowerment, agency, and ownership, many women farmers are still in the dark. In India, 85% of rural women are engaged in agriculture, yet only about 13% own land. Overcoming the gender gap with support and empowerment […]
Putting Women in the Driver’s Seat
In many traditional farming communities, women handle most of the manual work in addition to having responsibilities for home and family management, as many of them have never driven a car. They are consigned to work in planting, weeding, and drying beds while also managing the feeding, education, and healthcare of their immediate and often […]
CARE and Cargill’s cocoa collaboration: Transforming lives together
As two global organizations, Cargill and CARE understand the complexity of the interrelated challenges of community development, nutrition, improved livelihoods and women’s empowerment. But we also know the tremendous impact that can be unlocked when we work together toward shared goals: learning from one another, challenging each other’s assumptions about what’s possible, and finding new […]
Two Unusual Low-Cost Chicken Feed Options for Some of the World’s Poorest Entrepreneurs
In rural parts of Odisha, India, backyard chickens scavenging on farms and eating kitchen waste are a familiar sight. Scrawny birds patrol gardens freely, snatching up worms and insects, but they often become prey to larger predators. And since they don’t live in a coop, free-range chickens succumb to diseases that could easily be prevented […]
A Love Story Turned Passion Project
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, one can easily recognise it as a purely commercial endeavour that commodifies love. Healthy scepticism aside, there is increasing recognition of commerce as a touchpoint for driving social change. And why not, after all, found a business on such a simple universal principle as love? This is what Richard O’Connor […]
Faced with the COVID-19 Pandemic, Farmers in Ecuador Innovate a Whole New Food System
There was no way for small-scale farmers in Ecuador to anticipate the COVID-19 pandemic more than a year ago when they started diversifying the products they grew and mapping efficient paths to get them to hungry urban markets. But when the coronavirus hit the South American nation hard, these farmers found themselves well-prepared to keep […]
Inclusive businesses’ insights to staying resilient in times of crisis
Resilience is one of the widest used terms among the global business community in the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. An innumerable number of toolkits and guidelines have been prepared by consulting firms and other organisations to support companies in assessing their level of preparedness to confront and survive the pandemic. However, as Ndidi Nwuneli of Sahel […]
Diversifying livelihoods for Maasai people: The value of business
For Antonella Mpario, her first step into small-scale business as a beekeeper has proved fruitful in more ways than one. Not only does this bring much-needed funds for her and her community, but it has also resulted in greater equality for both her and her fellow female beekeepers in a traditionally patriarchal society. Antonella is […]
A sustainable equitable food system needs to be nourished at the source
COVID-19 has exposed many of the vulnerabilities in our food system, one of which is just how reliant global supply chains are on people’s well-being at every step of the journey. The small-scale farmers in emerging markets who produce much of the world’s food ingredients, live in countries that face high rates of malnutrition, with […]
How Women Farmers and Entrepreneurs Can Build Resilience during COVID-19
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, Virginie Adounon faced significant challenges with her business. In 2017, the 30-year-old mother of five decided to open a beauty salon in Bohicon, a city in southern Benin. Her shop was constructed out of bamboo, and during the rainy season, water would pour in from the ceiling. “I had no […]
Listening to women cotton farmers’ voices: The human cost of climate change
In my role with CottonConnect over the last six years, I have worked on social impact programmes to improve the health and livelihoods of women cotton farmers, and am aware of the specific needs of women in these communities. What I’m seeing now is how climate change contributes to the vicious cycle of poverty, from […]
Covid: no ‘great leveller’ when it comes to women workers’ rights
Measures to tackle COVID-19 have exacerbated gender inequality across the globe. That’s the damning verdict of a recent report from the UN Foundation, which highlights the pandemic’s impact on women and girls everywhere. As we mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, it is an opportune time to remember that while we have […]
The COVID-19 Pandemic is Jeopardizing Women’s Ability to Earn a Living. Here’s How We Can Respond.
Elisabeth Atchade’s cashew orchard in central Benin feels like a world away from the epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic. But when the government instituted lockdowns and travel restrictions in an effort to stop the spread of the disease, the impact on the mother of four was very real. “The start of the COVID-19 pandemic coincided […]
Making agricultural trade unions accessible to women workers
“We are worried everyday regarding our children. It has become very difficult to run the family with this little wage.” “The government has provided us shelters recently. But how can humans live in a 16 ft home? They are more suitable for cows and goats.” These are the words of women working on tea estates […]
Demonstrating a business case for agroecology
In April 2019, Practical Action announced the start of a partnership with the IKEA Foundation designed to demonstrate that a business-led approach to agroecology is possible. Agroecology is a form of regenerative agriculture that is based on the principle of WORKING WITH rather than WORKING AGAINST nature. In practice, this means harnessing the synergy between […]
How impact investing can boost rural economies during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
About two-thirds of the 600 million people living in extreme poverty around the world live in rural areas, and the COVID-19 crisis is exacerbating every challenge they face. Rural communities often lack access to proper infrastructure, health care, markets, education and finance. As the world goes digital in the face of the pandemic, people without […]
Building a commercial buffalo dairy in Laos: five minutes with entrepreneur Susie Martin
Q 1. What is your inclusive business model? Laos Buffalo Dairy is a commercial buffalo dairy in the heart of Laos. Our production facility makes yogurt, cheese and ice cream for sale on local and overseas markets. Locally, we distribute to highend hotels and restaurants and have a shopfront for tourists looking to visit and […]
Four lessons for businesses wanting to build more equitable supply chains through sustainable sourcing
Approximately 78 percent of the world’s poor, or 800 million people , live in rural areas and rely on agriculture for a living. Most of those smallholder farmers are operating at extremely low levels of productivity and are excluded from formal markets. Meanwhile, there is a growing demand for locally-sourced food, particularly in growing urban hubs […]
If it is broke, do fix it Rebuilding better agriculture and food systems – and what business can do to help
In various places and to varying degrees, September has been a month of return – to socialising, to school, to the office and maybe, if we just squint hard enough, to some version of normal. Let’s hope we don’t also return to our old thinking around livelihoods, agriculture and business’ role in both. From Europe […]