November 04, 2019
This post originally appeared in the Center for Financial Inclusion at Accion Blog.
I’m a Freakonomics junkie. Stephen Dubner, the host, presents one of the more entertaining ways to consume the latest research.
March 07, 2019
That morning ritual loved by millions, a simple cup of coffee, may one day be a thing of the past. New research shows that 60% of the world’s 124 species of wild coffee face a mounting threat of extinction, mostly as a result of deforestation. This potential loss of genetic diversity would, in turn, limit the ways in which coffee could be adapted to a changing climate and disease threats.
This paper highlights the research findings from a quasi-experimental evaluation conducted with coconut smallholder farmers and an activity-based costing evaluation conducted with partners of Grameen Foundation’s FarmerLink program that was implemented in the Philippines in collaboration with the Philippine Coconut Authority (government agency), Franklin Baker Company of the Philippines (coconut buyer), and People’s Bank of Caraga (financial services provider). Combining the power of mobile technology and trusted human intermediaries, FarmerLink was conceived with the primary goal of increasing coconut farming households’ incomes by improving productivity, providing access to appropriate financial services, linking farmers directly to markets, and reducing their losses to pests, diseases and weather calamities. Results from the evaluation suggest improved adoption of good agricultural practices among smallholder farmers and cost-savings through digitizing famer support services among the implementing partners.
Mobile technology, remote-sensing data, and big data are opening opportunities to integrate the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers into the broader agri-food system. In this report, Grameen Foundation, on behalf of Digital Development for Feed the Future analyzes current practices and new opportunities to bring fragmented data, technology, resources, and service providers together to support the farmer ecosystem—with the potential of bringing about another agricultural revolution.
Grameen Foundation and Musoni Microfinance developed the Kilimo Booster loan tailored to the needs of smallholders. We have disbursed more than 34,000 of these loans, and 70% of group loans have gone to women.
October 16, 2018
Global hunger is near a ten-year high. Almost 821 million people—one out of every nine persons—are chronically hungry and roughly one-third of women of childbearing age suffer from anemia, a form of malnutrition that heightens risks of maternal and infant mortality and saps energy. In Asia, 515 million are hungry, in Africa, 256.5 million.