Steps for improving incomes in banana supply chains
Banana producers face an ever-tightening financial squeeze, caused by soaring export costs, plummeting import prices, climate change, Covid-19, supermarket price wars and the fusarium TR4 fungus. Add to this rising food prices and shortages of farming inputs like fertiliser, and you have a perfect storm. These challenges threaten the prospects of smallholder banana farmers and […]
Three critical actions to lift smallholder farmers from coffee ‘limbo’
Since launching our sustainability ambition for the future of coffee two years ago – Coffee LENS – we’ve seen coffee prices swing from a four-year low, to record highs. The current spike will be offering some respite to the world’s 12.5m smallholder producers. But as the coffee cycle goes, high prices induce oversupply from the […]
Turbo-charging D2C sales for an impact sanitation product
Our client: SATO by LIXIL, creating sustainable, affordable hygiene solutions LIXIL designed its SATO product range to improve sanitation and hygiene access for communities without access to sewer systems, via affordable and easy-to-install systems. SATO has impacted over 25 million lives to date, shipping over 5.1 million units across 38 countries. The blue SATO pan, […]
Levelling the playing field – Developing market systems that support regenerative agriculture
Market systems have driven the development of an industrial agricultural system that has excessively low unit costs, at the expense of environment and people. For transformation to happen, we need market systems to drive agriculture that is regenerative. How does regenerative agriculture differ to ‘conventional’ agriculture’? Regenerative agriculture aims to optimise production whilst looking after […]
Supporting Waitrose Workers in Kenya Through the Pandemic
Farm Africa has been partnering with the Waitrose & Partners Foundation in Kenya since 2017 and supports the delivery of projects with 12,000 workers across seven vegetable and flower farms in the Waitrose supply chain. Projects are funded by sales of Foundation produce and supplier farms in the UK and it is the workers themselves […]
How important is protecting the environment to you?
Most of you would probably answer that environmental protection is very important. Now, consider the following question: What actions do you take for protecting the environment? Discussions on how to address climate change often present disparate views. On the one hand, some argue that actions at the individual level – such as reducing the use […]
5,000 miles of connection – why the war in Ukraine is causing starvation in the Horn of Africa
The last two years have reminded us how connected the world is and how our lives and livelihoods depend on one another. Disruptions in supply chains during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the war in Ukraine continues to demonstrate that what happens in one part of the world can have severe consequences […]
New research finds solutions to farmer resilience amid global crises
This year’s Business Fights Poverty Global Summit is warning of the tsunami of poverty created by COVID-19, climate change and conflict that our community is striving to resist. For the people working in global supply chains, in agriculture, fashion, extractive industries in low-income countries, and who often experience entrenched social inequality, crisis is all too […]
Making community and collaboration the route to climate justice
Eight of the ten most severe global risks identified over the next ten years are related to environmental and societal risks, according to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2022. Of these, the five environmental related risks are climate action failure, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, environmental damage and natural resource crises (which include […]
Boosting young Kenyan farmers’ incomes through climate-smart agriculture
A six-year partnership between Farm Africa and the supermarket Aldi UK has enabled hundreds of young farmers in western Kenya to develop thriving horticulture businesses and build their resilience to climate change. The Growing Futures project was first launched in 2016, when Aldi UK teamed up with Farm Africa to launch a three-year initiative enabling young farmers in the northern Rift […]
Combating rural poverty through Inclusive Business
Maize is the staple crop for 1.6 million smallholder farmers in Zambia. It is their main food, their source of cash – and their nemesis. Growing maize in monoculture, lacking access to inputs, and relying on traders to reach markets, most smallholder farmers stay desperately poor. According to the World Bank, more than three out […]
Honduran coffee farmers hope for a brighter future
Anyone working in coffee will know that Honduras is an important origin. Honduran coffee has been a good news story, it is an important export, and it is well regarded worldwide for its flavoursome speciality beans, but it is under threat from climate change. According to the World Bank, Honduras remains one of the poorest […]
Tackling inequality – an integral component to long-term business success
Sustainability has become mainstream. Today more than ever, business is expected to take action to tackle the climate emergency, bring greater sustainability into value chains and be held accountable for these efforts. Capital markets, consumers, and governments are all in agreement that sustainability is the only long-term success for business – as well as for […]
Driving Social Entrepreneurship and Nature Conservation in Mexico
The Copalita-Zimatán-Huatulco watershed in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico is home to one third of the country’s biodiversity and equally rich in culture. Zapotec indigenous communities have lived in the upper and middle parts of the watershed for centuries, since pre-Hispanic times. As in many rural areas, women in the Copalita watershed play a key […]
COP15: Businesses Commit to Helping Grow a World Wonder
Business Fights Poverty joined with the UNCCD (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire this week to launch the Great Green Wall (GGW) Sourcing Challenge. The Challenge aims to bring together companies and other partners to help unlock the potential of the Sahel, the semi-arid region stretching across Africa just south of […]
Facing The Poverty Tsunami: How Business Can Support the Lives, Livelihoods and Access to Learning of the Most Vulnerable People and Communities
The Poverty Tsunami: COVID, Conflict and Climate Change COVID, conflict and climate change are among a confluence of challenges driving a tsunami of poverty that is already crashing into the lives of vulnerable people and communities around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to contain its spread led to 97 million more people […]
Corruption and climate vulnerability – A devastating relationship
Released last month, Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2020 was analysed with a particular focus on corruption and its effect on the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research shows that corruption undermines public health systems and democratic institutions, damaging governments’ ability to respond effectively and democratically to public health crises like COVID-19. The acute crisis of COVID-19 has made it […]
Tackling global warming through the promotion of clean cooking energy in Ghana
Globally, over 1.1 billion people live without access to electricity and almost 3 billion people lack clean cooking facilities (SNV, 2022). The world’s poor are continuously affected by the low availability of sustainable and reliable energy, with increasing difficulty in remote areas. Modern energy services are crucial to human well-being as well as to countries’ […]
The Road to COP27: Putting People at the Heart of Climate Action
In the coming days, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will publish its next milestone report; this one focusing on the mitigation of climate change, including an assessment of technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Their last report, published in February, focused on the impacts of climate change. Beyond the science and the […]
Empowering women and inspiring youth: Reflections from Stephanie Lamma Ewi
A new wave of corporate sustainability is approaching; one in which conventional corporate ‘sustainability’ strategies are set to be replaced by new levels of ambition centred around creating a ‘just and regenerative’ future. Guided by a new north star – an economy that sustains the wellbeing of all and the capacity of our natural world […]