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Fair Planet is an Israeli non-profit organization that operates in rural communities in east Africa to increase food security and provide economic opportunities to smallholder farmers.
Fair Planet was founded by Dr. Shoshan Haran in 2012 as a means to provide local farmers in Africa access to seeds and farming practices of the developed world.
According Fair Planet analysis, local seed varieties are highly susceptible to pests and diseases and the crops have very short shelf life. Average yield of tomato crop produced from local seeds is 7,670 Kg / Ha, about 20% of the yield achieved when using high quality seed varieties. This results in malnutrition and poverty, and limits the farmers to subsistence farming. Climate change and occasional outbreak of pests threaten their survival.
In contrast, professional high quality seeds varieties, which are used throughout the industrial world, are resistant to many pests and diseases, the crops are of high quality and long shelf life, minimizing post-harvest losses. However, seed companies largely ignore Africa in general and small-scale farmers in particular due to the small-scale nature of the farming, and the poor infrastructure, which mean that the market is largely not profitable.
The NPO therefore seeks a long-term technology transfer process - on the one hand facilitating access of smallholder farmers to seed of the highest-quality vegetable varieties suitable for their need, and on the other hand, training the farmers to use these seeds with minimal changes to their traditional production.
Fair Planet aims to bridge that gap with a unique model that combines volunteer work, local public entities and global seed companies.
At the first stage, Fair Planet collaborates with local public entities and with the private sector to builds a working model that is intended to be scalable and durable impact. They collect data on local market demand for specific crop types and variety requirements. They visit smallholder farmers to learn and understand their technical and economic farming capacity. [1]
The next stage consists of performing technology adaptation trials and knowledge transfer materials. The NPO teams up with local farmers and perform independent adaptation variety trials and selects the best locally performing varieties. Through collaboration with seed companies such as Limagrain, Syngenta, Bayer and others, Fair Planet has access to over 80% of the commercial vegetable seed varieties. [2]
The next step is to train the local farmers in Good Agricultural Practices. For this purpose the NPO has developed guideline material made suitable for illiterate farmers. Fair Planet agronomic volunteers train lead farmers and also train local trainers, building their capacity to independently train farmers in good agricultural practices and upscale the impact. During village seminars and open days they demonstrate best practices and share lead farmers' success with neighboring farmers.
As of 2020, lead farmers showed significant yield increases in a variety of vegetables. For example, in Ethiopia lead farmers' crop yield in tomatoes has reached 32150kg/ha, compared to the countries' average of 5590kg/ha (according to FAO [3] ). As a result, the yearly income of an average family involved in the program has doubled within a year.
Fair Planet has launched projects in Ethiopia (in Dire Dawa, Haramaya and Butajira), Tanzania (Morogoro) and Rwanda, spanning three major climate regions. With 190 volunteers to date, they have directly trained 2360 lead farmers in 65 villages in Ethiopia. An additional 75000 neighbor farmers were reached thanks do diffusion of knowledge.
According to the NPO, a social impact measurement and evaluation done by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, estimates that the projects have positively influenced half a million people. 95% of the families have improved their nutrition, 83% of the families used the additional income to send their children to school. 92% of the families enjoy better health services. Almost all of the farmers have opened saving accounts and continue to invest if varied sources of income in a sustainable manner. [4]
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output.
Teff, also known as Eragrostis tef, Williams lovegrass, or annual bunch grass, is an annual grass, a species of lovegrass native to Ethiopia, where it first originated in the Ethiopian Highlands. It is cultivated for its edible seeds, also known as teff. Teff was one of the earliest plants domesticated. It is one of the most important staple crops in Ethiopia.
Precision agriculture (PA) is a management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production.” It is used in both crop and livestock production. Precision agriculture often employs technologies to automate agricultural operations, improving their diagnosis, decision-making or performing. The goal of precision agriculture research is to define a decision support system for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources.
Sustainable agriculture is farming in sustainable ways meeting society's present food and textile needs, without compromising the ability for current or future generations to meet their needs. It can be based on an understanding of ecosystem services. There are many methods to increase the sustainability of agriculture. When developing agriculture within sustainable food systems, it is important to develop flexible business processes and farming practices. Agriculture has an enormous environmental footprint, playing a significant role in causing climate change, water scarcity, water pollution, land degradation, deforestation and other processes; it is simultaneously causing environmental changes and being impacted by these changes. Sustainable agriculture consists of environment friendly methods of farming that allow the production of crops or livestock without causing damage to human or natural systems. It involves preventing adverse effects on soil, water, biodiversity, and surrounding or downstream resources, as well as to those working or living on the farm or in neighboring areas. Elements of sustainable agriculture can include permaculture, agroforestry, mixed farming, multiple cropping, and crop rotation.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is a non-profit research-for-development organization that develops improved varieties of wheat and maize with the aim of contributing to food security, and innovates agricultural practices to help boost production, prevent crop disease and improve smallholder farmers' livelihoods. CIMMYT is one of the 15 CGIAR centers. CIMMYT is known for hosting the world's largest maize and wheat genebank at its headquarters in Mexico.
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit while satisfying the needs of consumers for products related to natural resources. Agribusinesses comprise farms, food and fiber processing, forestry, fisheries, biotechnology and biofuel enterprises and their input suppliers.
The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) is a farming methodology that aims to increase the yield of rice while using fewer resources and reducing environmental impacts. The method was developed by a French Jesuit Father Henri de Laulanié in Madagascar and built upon decades of agricultural experimentation. SRI focuses on changing the management of plants, soil, water, and nutrients to create a more productive and sustainable system of rice cultivation.
A smallholding or smallholder is a small farm operating under a small-scale agriculture model. Definitions vary widely for what constitutes a smallholder or small-scale farm, including factors such as size, food production technique or technology, involvement of family in labor and economic impact. There are an estimated 500 million smallholder farms in developing countries of the world alone, supporting almost two billion people. Smallholdings are usually farms supporting a single family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. As a country becomes more affluent, smallholdings may not be self-sufficient. Still, they may be valued for providing supplemental sustenance, recreation, and general rural lifestyle appreciation. As the sustainable food and local food movements grow in affluent countries, some of these smallholdings are gaining increased economic viability in the developed world as well.
Worldwide more human beings gain their livelihood from agriculture than any other endeavor; the majority are self-employed subsistence farmers living in the tropics. While growing food for local consumption is the core of tropical agriculture, cash crops are also included in the definition.
Push–pull technology is an intercropping strategy for controlling agricultural pests by using repellent "push" plants and trap "pull" plants. For example, cereal crops like maize or sorghum are often infested by stem borers. Grasses planted around the perimeter of the crop attract and trap the pests, whereas other plants, like Desmodium, planted between the rows of maize, repel the pests and control the parasitic plant Striga. Push–pull technology was developed at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya in collaboration with Rothamsted Research, UK. and national partners. This technology has been taught to smallholder farmers through collaborations with universities, NGOs and national research organizations.
A farmer field school (FFS) is a group-based learning process which has been used by a number of governments, non-governmental organizations, and international agencies to promote integrated pest management (IPM). The first FFSs were designed and managed by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Indonesia in 1989. Since then, more than two million farmers across Asia have participated in this type of learning.
The Collaborative Crop Research Program (CCRP) funds participatory, collaborative research on agroecological intensification (AEI). Funded projects typically link international, national, and local organizations with communities of smallholder farmers, researchers, development professionals, and other parties. Projects work together as part of a Community of Practice to generate technical and social innovations to improve nutrition, livelihoods, and productivity for farming communities in Africa and South America. Large-scale impact is realized when new ideas, technologies, or processes are adapted, when insights from research catalyze change in policy and practice, and when innovation inspires further success. The program is under the direction of Rebecca J. Nelson of Cornell University and Jane Maland Cady of the McKnight Foundation.
Agriculture in Kenya dominates Kenya's economy. 15–17 percent of Kenya's total land area has sufficient fertility and rainfall to be farmed, and 7–8 percent can be classified as first-class land. In 2006, almost 75 percent of working Kenyans made their living by farming, compared with 80 percent in 1980. About one-half of Kenya's total agricultural output is non-marketed subsistence production.
Ensete ventricosum, commonly known as enset or ensete, Ethiopian banana, Abyssinian banana, pseudo-banana, false banana and wild banana, is a species of flowering plant in the banana family Musaceae. The domesticated form of the plant is cultivated only in Ethiopia, where it provides the staple food for approximately 20 million people. The name Ensete ventricosum was first published in the Kew Bulletin 1947, p. 101. Its synonyms include Musa arnoldiana De Wild., Musa ventricosa Welw. and Musa ensete J. F. Gmelin. In its wild form, it is native to the eastern edge of the Great African Plateau, extending northwards from South Africa through Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to Ethiopia, and west to the Congo, being found in high-rainfall forests on mountains, and along forested ravines and streams.
Purchase for Progress (P4P) is an initiative of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), involving over 500 partnerships, including Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, FAO, ACDI/VOCA, TechnoServe and others. Launched in September 2008 as a five-year pilot, P4P sought to explore programming and procurement modalities with the greatest potential to stimulate agricultural and market development in ways that maximized benefits to smallholder farmers. The program, largely developed by the eleventh Executive Director of the WFP, Josette Sheeran, arose as the WFP desired to purchase food in a way that was part of the "solution to hunger". These efforts are aligned with recommendations issued by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that call for an establishment of programs in support of socially vulnerable groups. and to the Zero Hunger Challenge launched by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Special UN Reporter 2012–2014, Olivier De Schutter, claimed that public procurement systems favour economically strong bidders, thus excluding smallholder farmers. His conclusion was that public procurement schemes supportive of smallholders could have "powerful impacts on the reduction of rural poverty." P4P is built upon this very principle as it enables low-income farmers to supply food to the WFP's operations. Eventually, the transaction can be regulated by a forward contract, with the farmer agreeing to sell in the future a certain amount of output at a fixed price. Essentially, the P4P program aims to create a wide and sophisticated market for commodities in developing countries.
The environmental impact of cocoa production includes deforestation, soil contamination, and herbicide resistance. The majority of cocoa farms are now located in Ivory Coast and Ghana.
Contract farming involves agricultural production being carried out on the basis of an agreement between the buyer and farm producers. Sometimes it involves the buyer specifying the quality required and the price, with the farmer agreeing to deliver at a future date. More commonly, however, contracts outline conditions for the production of farm products and for their delivery to the buyer's premises. The farmer undertakes to supply agreed quantities of a crop or livestock product, based on the quality standards and delivery requirements of the purchaser. In return, the buyer, usually a company, agrees to buy the product, often at a price that is established in advance. The company often also agrees to support the farmer through, e.g., supplying inputs, assisting with land preparation, providing production advice and transporting produce to its premises. The term "outgrower scheme" is sometimes used synonymously with contract farming, most commonly in Eastern and Southern Africa. Contract farming can be used for many agricultural products, although in developing countries it is less common for staple crops such as rice and maize.
The Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) is an autonomous organization acting as a nodal agency for basic, strategic, anticipatory and applied research on various aspects of horticulture such as fruits, vegetable, ornamental, medicinal and aromatic plants and mushrooms in India. The institute has its headquarters in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India and is a subsidiary of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), New Delhi, under the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare. It recently has been ranked 1st for the combined years 2019-20 and 2020–21 by the ICAR.
The production of flax and other oilseed crops peak in the temperate climates of the middle mountain and hill farming regions in Nepal. Flax matures in approximately 90 to 125 days and develops most rapidly under the cool, short season of growing. The middle hill region of the Lamjung district exemplifies an ideal climate for flax production experiencing consistently cool temperatures for most of the year. The shallow rooting system makes the plant especially susceptible to drought and excess moisture in the soil but easier to harvest. Most cash crops are grown in the hill regions of Nepal as this is where two-thirds of the subsistence farmers reside, who need to produce just enough food to feed themselves and their families.
Shoshan Haran is an agronomist and the founder of the Fair Planet NPO. Born and raised in Kibbutz Be'eri, she studied for a BA in plant protection at the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University, Rehovot, Israel. After working in the field in the kibbutz itself she returned to the faculty and worked on a direct path to a Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Ilan Chet. She then continued to postdoctoral degree at Rutgers University NJ with the help of a Fulbright scholarship and a BARD scholarship.