Small Farmers, Big Opportunity

How can we feed the growing world? By empowering one small scale farmer at a time.

Bean Farmer in Sri Lanka. Image courtesy of UN WomenWatch

The global population, having ballooned over the last century, is likely to reach 7.5 billion people within the next decade. How are we to feed everyone? 

Large multinational food companies have been thinking about securing their food supply for some time and have put a lot of energy and advancement in improving the productivity of their usual suppliers: big plantations and farms. But as these corporations look ahead to a swelling consumer base from a growing global middle class coupled with increasingly fragile food stock as climate change threatens crops, they are forced to focus beyond large farms and co-ops to make sure that their food supply grows apace with demand. 

Increasingly, they are considering ways to include small scale farmers into their supply chains - those previously excluded from the global food industry and often some of the poorest and most marginalized. A recent report, Catalyzing Smallholder Agricultural Finance, by the development consultancy, Dalberg, found that this sector is no small fry: there are an estimated 450 million small holder farmers in the world - that’s more than the US and Japanese populations combined. With this new focus, it might finally be the big time for the small farmer. 

By 2018,  Dalberg, predicts that food consumption worldwide is expected to increase by nearly 30% compared to 2005. Our eating habits aren’t also just preoccupied with the amount of food available; many of us, especially in developed countries, expect a stable food supply and prices. We’re accustomed to having strawberries all year round for roughly the same cost, not to mention coffee - perhaps our most popular global addiction? If we don’t work harder at improving global food production, the stability of our food system is under threat. Factors such as climate change, population growth, and an expanding global middle class -- as many emerging countries are getting richer -- are placing increasing strains on the world’s food supply. 

Those with a sweet tooth might be horrified to learn that if cocoa consumption continues to grow at its current pace, then we’re on track to see a large cocoa deficit of one million tonne by 2020 if we don’t expand our production. A secure and sustainable crop is no longer a luxury for a business, instead smart companies are waking up to the significant food challenge ahead and realize it is a core business threat. Five of the top international chocolate manufacturers -- Kraft, Mars, Nestlé, Ferrero and Hershey’s -- have made public commitments to sustainable cocoa. Unilever, a major innovator and business leader in sustainable supply chains, has pledged to sustainably source 100% of its tea by 2015 -- and their tea production amounts to 12% of the world’s black tea supply. This change in corporate direction  for sustainable and inclusive production can have huge implications for our global development.

With so many demands upon food production, and large farms operating at near maximum capacity, the spotlight is now cast upon the small farmer. The small scale farmer is usually defined as having less than two hectares in land and often plighted with a high vulnerability to weather due to old farming technology and outmoded practices resulting in low yields and low quality crops. Adding to their troubles, small scale farmers often lack market access as they work in remote areas, therefore forced to rely on middle men to collect their goods to take to market giving them little control or awareness over how much they can sell their crops for, keeping them mired in poverty and unable to develop their business.  

Microfinance -- the practice of providing financial services, such as savings and small loans, to those excluded from the formal financial system -- could have a  major role to play in unlocking the potential of these marginalized small scale farmers. With an appropriate loan designed for the  farmer’s needs, such as working with harvesting seasonality, small scale farmers can upgrade their tools, buy more resilient seeds, and generally have access to capital to help improve their crop. 

Fashioning Women’s Development

Editor's Note: Lisa Wong is a traditional and impact investment professional at Nikko Asset Management and co-runs the UK Chapter of the international Women Advancing Microfinance (WAM) network based out of London. Her specialties include female empowerment, inclusive business, microfinance, and green investment. An avid writer and reader, she is currently working on a creative project on the intersection between the written word and visual culture in her spare time. She holds an English MA from the University of Cambridge and Dual Degree Master of Public Administration in Public Policy and Economics from the London School of Economics and Columbia University. 

Women and fashion have a longstanding and complex relationship: often a source of joy as well as contempt. Recently, in the sleek surroundings of a London Soho art gallery, Rook and Raven, two leading female sustainable fashion experts exposed some ugly truths about fashion, and the visionary efforts underway to revolutionize the industry as part of the Women Advancing Microfinance UK speaker series.

Dr. Pamela Ravasio, winner of UK “Green Oscar,” the Observer Ethical Award, and textile supply chain expert, ranked the fashion industry as the second worst in the world in environmental and social abuse – right after agriculture. Behind the basic white tee and the darling dress, there are often stories of child labour, chemical poisoning, slavery and textile waste – to name but a few ills. Most fashion savvy consumers and creators are not purposefully inflicting such terrors on the world, Ravasio argues, but in a veil of unknowing many are ignorantly or blindly allowing a network of harm to propagate in the service of style.

When one is confronted with a t-shirt; and 2.4 billion are produced a year; one often has no idea who made it and under what conditions. A traditional conception of fashion sees that impact is measured by aesthetics and functionality, which focuses on the design level. Often designers have never been in a cotton field or a dye factory – they have no concept of the wider impact of their design decisions, or any relation to the effects they are causing. A fashion supply and distribution chain is often so fragmented that the full story of an item of clothing, from how the crop was grown, the labour conditions in which it was made to how the waste products are disposed of are rarely fully known. The button may be from Taiwan, the cotton from China, the worker from Bangladesh – the assembly line is often global and multi-partied. Ravasio revealed that 25% of the world’s pesticides are used in relation to the fashion industry – how many fashion insiders and consumers even consider this factor when faced with a new item of clothing?