New pledges totalling USD 50 million announced in July
The Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge welcomed new commitments from two companies in July. With pledges from FMC Corporation and Re-Basket, the Pledge has now mobilized nearly USD 560 million from 46 companies towards its zero-hunger goal.
As part of the Pledge, companies must align their business investment with solutions towards the sustainable eradication of hunger targeting priority countries and intervention areas identified as having the greatest impact in the report Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger.
Pledges from FMC…
FMC Corporation, a leading global agricultural sciences company, recognizes the role of the private sector in helping end hunger. "We are increasingly concerned by the growing number of people around the world facing acute food insecurity and believe companies like FMC have an obligation to use our resources and expertise to develop real solutions to the hunger crisis,” says Julie DiNatale, Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer.
FMC has pledged USD 30.5 million to support smallholder farmers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It will invest in launching a farm intelligence platform to provide farmers with real-time data and insight about pest pressures on their crops so that they can pro-actively treat outbreaks before there is widespread crop damage. FMC will also invest in its initiative to help smallholder farmers access services and technologies to improve their production yields and aims to impact 175,000 famers over a three-year period. Finally, FMC will invest in partnerships and programmes to train young people to provide extension services to farmers in Kenya, enable rural women in India to become beekeepers and work with a fintech start-up company to help famers access credit to purchase crop inputs.
As Julie notes, “We know that there is more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet – but the population is growing in many places where people don’t have access to a reliable, nutritious food supply. Equipping farmers in those places with the inputs, technologies and training to sustainably produce enough food for their families and communities is a critical part of the solution.”
…and Re-Basket
Re-Basket, a precision agricultural solutions provider in Africa, has pledged USD 20 million to help farmers in Africa through two programmes. The first programme will offer training for rural youth with a focus on using new technology, such as artificial intelligence, to enable sustainable farming practices while improving production yields. The second programme will offer precision agricultural solutions to support sustainable practices.
According to Pardon Mukoyi, CEO of Re-Basket, “We are at the forefront of technological innovation and leverage the extraordinary power of technology to tackle the complex challenges facing the agricultural sector. We want to apply these tools in our quest to eradicate food insecurity and advance agriculture 4.0. Through our involvement in the Zero Hunger Private Sector Pledge, we aim to redefine the future of agriculture and help nourish a hunger-free continent.”
As a Zimbabwe based start-up, Re-Basket seeks to transform farming methods across Africa by making technology-advanced equipment readily available and inexpensive to smallholder farmers. Through its African Farming with AI programme, the company aims at enabling famers to maximize the use of new technologies and apply them to the local context by using freely available resources. As their CEO notes, “We prioritize farmer empowerment and access to technology. By doing so, we can unleash the potential of the African continent.”