5 Ways Feed the Future is Working with Businesses to Build Community Resilience

Feed the Future partners with five new companies to make innovative technologies available to smallholder farmers around the world.

Innovations and services from partnerships are key to building resilience in farming communities. Our work benefits from the expertise and ingenuity of the global business community, and Feed the Future is harnessing private sector expertise and businesses’ desire to expand into new markets and invest in rural communities. This enterprise-driven approach ensures that the progress we are making lasts.

For example, the private sector is uniquely positioned to provide smallholder farmers with proven solutions that can help them adapt to and manage unexpected challenges. The Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation project is launching partnerships with five new companies to make timely technologies available to smallholder farmers around the world.

By providing investment assistance, expert guidance and technical support, we are making a unique difference in empowering our private sector partners to assess and improve adaptability and responsiveness within their own business models, while helping farmers proactively reduce and manage risk and recover from shocks and stresses. Our work is building true community resilience as both businesses and farming communities can meet current and emerging challenges.

Here are five new partnerships between Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation and companies to grow their businesses and build resilience among smallholder farmers.

1. ColdHubs Limited (Nigeria) will introduce 20 new solar-powered cold storage rooms across Nigeria near markets and farms where smallholder farmers can store their fruits and vegetables. In addition to preventing crops from spoiling in high temperatures, farmers will also gain more flexibility and the option to wait to sell their harvests when prices increase in the different seasons. Feed the Future will provide technical support on financial and inventory management to ensure that ColdHubs grow sustainably and profitably to continue supporting farmers long after the project ends.

2. Hester Biosciences Nepal (Nepal) will help fight a common livestock disease, Peste des Petits Ruminants, by introducing an improved version of the vaccine that doesn’t require refrigeration and allowing it to be available to smallholder farmers in remote areas for the first time. Feed the Future will help Hester launch this vaccine by providing expert guidance on distribution methods and outreach strategies to ensure it reaches farmers in a cost-efficient manner.

3. Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (Honduras and Kenya) will work with smallholder farmers in planting new drought-resistant coffee to help achieve sustainable crop production, even in the face of changing temperatures and weather conditions. By supporting the development of management systems that track farmer-buyer relationships, Feed the Future will help Neumann purchase coffee from specifically targeted farmers to realize efficiencies, making their commercial supply chain more reliable and resilient.

4. Agri Seedco Limited (Kenya) will introduce two drought- and pest-resistant varieties of sorghum seed to the Kenyan market. These new varieties will help protect sorghum producers from disease attacks to the maize while also diversifying the livelihoods of producers who often are often faced with harsh climates and destruction from pests and parasites such as the fall armyworm and striga. Feed the Future will help Agri Seedco with farmer outreach and marketing to increase the demand for improved sorghum seed.

5. Takaful Insurance of Africa Limited (Kenya) will sell livestock insurance that automatically pays farmers when there is a shock, such as drought. If there is a drought, every insured Kenyan farmer will get a payout without having to submit individual claims. In times of stress, Kenya’s pastoralists will be able to keep their animals healthy with access to funds to buy necessities such as water and animal feed. As insurance is a new idea for many Kenyan farmers, Feed the Future will provide technical support to Takaful in the design and promotion of the insurance package to help encourage farmers to buy it annually to remain resilient during shocks and stresses.

Feed the Future Partnering for Innovation helps the private sector scale and market agricultural innovations for smallholder farmers. The program has supported 50 companies and organizations in 17 countries, reaching over 1.4 million smallholder farmers to date. Read more here.