Let Communities Take the Reins on Building Resilience

By Ed Keturakis, Vice President of Program Development, and Simone Schenkel, Program Coordinator, Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture (CNFA), and featured on The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

This blog is part of Farming First’s new #SDG2countdown campaign, a five-week effort exploring each of the five targets of SDG2 on ending hunger. The campaign culminates at Agriculture and Food Day on July 13^th in New York, which coincides with the High Level Political Forum to track progress on the SDGs. Browse quizzes, videos, infographics and more at www.farmingfirst.org/SDGs or using #Ag4SDGs on Twitter.

In 2015, UN member countries adopted a Sustainable Development Agenda titled “17 Goals to Transform Our World to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all.

And that, of course, is a tall order. Ours is a world of moving targets, a dynamic and rapidly changing environment in which technology, population growth, urbanization, and climate change are fast altering the long-established order of things. Read more

CNFA Board member, Doug Keesling featured in The Hill

Harvest celebrations are as old as agriculture itself. For millennia, these events traditionally have provided the opportunity for communities to celebrate successful growing seasons, and to enjoy the fruits of their labor.

In my case, that means wheat. My family has been growing and harvesting wheat on the Kansas plains for 141 years. Read more

On May 5th, 2017, USAID program REAP together with the Culinary Academy hosted an exciting culinary competition marking the 25th anniversary of Georgian and the US friendship. The event was aimed at promoting and supporting the production of Georgian agro products. REAP (Georgia’s Restoring Efficiency to Agriculture Production) has played a significant role in reviving Georgian agriculture and through this joyful competition celebrated the achievements in this sector.

Culinary and agriculture spheres are becoming increasingly prestigious in Georgia. The country’s progressive Culinary Academy established by Kakha Bendukhidze in the Agrarian University has contributed a lot to developing culinary scene in the country. Besides producing professional chefs the academy is actively promoting culinary sphere and bringing Georgian culinary scene to the new level. Read more

The U.S. Government, through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), provided humanitarian assistance for over 2 million Zimbabweans during the El Niño-induced drought that led to widespread crop failure and left 4.1 million rural Zimbabweans food insecure.  As the annual harvest approaches, USAID and its partners are reviewing the progress and achievements of a successful drought response and continuing ongoing activities that aim to improve long-term food security for Zimbabwe.

“The United States stood with the people of Zimbabwe during the drought,” said USAID/ Zimbabwe Mission Director Stephanie Funk.  “USAID’s assistance reduced suffering for over 2 million Zimbabweans and ensured that families had the necessary tools to cope with the negative effects of the drought.” Read more

By Sylvain Roy, President and CEO of CNFA, in Agri-Pulse on March 9, 2017.

Today the world is more interconnected and interdependent than ever. And yet one in nine people around the world go hungry every day. Food security is more than a nation-by-nation concern. Through investments in agriculture development programs in emerging and developing economies and a sustained global commitment we are making progress towards eliminating hunger but more needs to be done.

The United States has one of the most advanced agricultural systems in the world. Sophisticated technologies—biological, chemical, genetic and mechanical—have transformed U.S. farming into a finely engineered system of food production, processing and distribution. It is our entrepreneurial skills and free enterprise values that set us apart and contribute to our ability to transfer those elements for business success to men and women in every culture. Read more

In this guest blog post, Alexis Ellicott, CNFA Chief of Party on the USAID/Agro-Inputs Project tells Farming First how women are being empowered to enter into the male-dominated sector.

Women produce more than half of the world’s food. Global population is forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050, and the world’s women will continue to shoulder a huge share of the responsibility for feeding all those additional mouths.

But time is not on women’s side. According to the World Economic Forum, we still will be more than 120 years from full gender parity in 2050. It is no stretch to foresee that this continued lack of parity, should it persist as forecast, will severely hinder the ability of women to perform their key role in feeding the world’s population—and produce a potentially disastrous shortfall in the global food supply. Read more

KARNPLAY, Nimba — A group of 57 people at the Gbehlay-Geh Rural Women Multipurpose Cooperative Society received a US$100,000 loan to boost their rice and cassava production on March 1 in Karnplay.

The group, chaired by Annie Kruah, was formed in September 2005 with a focus on agriculture produce, including rice, cassava, and oil palm. In a special remark during a brief ceremony held prior to the loan distribution, Kruah cautioned her members to treat the loan repayment process with sincerity.

“Women, they have given us a challenge… and they are saying that if we cannot make it, other people will not make it,” Kruah said. “My women, I want [you] to leave proud on the Gbehlay-Geh name. The way the people look at us and respect us… they jumped over the other cooperatives and came to us. Please make us proud so that they can know that women [are] in the county.” Read more

MONROVIA, Liberia — The Afriland First Bank, a major Liberian commercial bank focused on Small Medium Enterprise (SME) and agricultural lending, on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the USAID Feed the Future Liberian Agribusiness Development Activity (FtF LADA).

FTF LADA is a USAID project focused on increasing the incomes of small holder farmers (SHFs) through private sector investment in agribusiness. Read more

Supporting local agribusiness has been at the center of the work Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture, or CNFA, an international development organization, has been doing in Georgia in an effort to improve farmer livelihoods, and now the Georgian government has taken notice.

CNFA has worked to support agribusiness through a variety of programs that helped reduce risk, improve mechanization and boost farmer skills. To date, the organization estimates it has assisted more than 430 Georgian agribusinesses. Read more