Blogs

The last few months have witnessed unprecedented challenges because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has not only had an impact on the health of people, but has also disrupted agricultural value chains, threatening the livelihoods of rural communities.

The situation is even more difficult in low-income countries like Benin. With the imposition of measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, economic activities have declined and communities which depend on farming and agri-based enterprises are badly affected.

“Some of the initiatives taken by our NGO Frontières et…

Agriculture is the source of livelihood for nearly 70 percent of the population of Myanmar. To strengthen communities and improve livelihoods in Myanmar, Helvetas, the Swiss development organisation, recently commissioned the translation into Burmese — the official language of Myanmar — of 30 farmer-to-farmer videos from Access Agriculture.

The 30 videos have been translated and posted online on the Access Agriculture video platform (www.accessagriculture.org) and are now accessible for extension staff,…

The happiest pigs I ever saw lived in the Bolivian Chaco, that semi-arid, lowland region in the southeast of the country. Every day, the villagers would let their pigs loose, to roam. The pigs, a tough little local breed, would wander off in troops, eating refuse on paths, scavenging in harvested maize fields or in forest remnants. At the end of the day they eagerly trotted home in anticipation of getting a trough of lawa, a thin maize soup that their owners cooked for them. Then the pigs were safely shut up in their pens for the night. It was a low-input system…

Governments are often friendlier to corporate farming than to agroecology, so the Andhra Pradesh Community managed Natural Farming (AP-CNF), formerly known as AP ZBNF, programme in India is a breath of fresh air. As AP-CNF says on its website, the programme “is based on the latest scientific discoveries in Agriculture, and, at the same time it is rooted in Indian tradition.” AP-CNF is striving to reach six million farmers.

AP-CNF adds no chemicals or other external inputs to the farm, hence there is “zero budget” for these purchases. Crops are kept healthy with intercropping,…

When 27-year old Neeraj Kumar heard about the Access Agriculture “Young Entrepreneur Challenge Fund 2019” announcement, he was excited to learn that winners would receive a Digisoft portable smart projector. Neeraj is co-founder of Khetee, an NGO based in Durdih village in Bihar, a state in eastern India.

What impressed him most was that the projector contained the entire Access Agriculture library of over 200 videos on agroecology and rural entrepreneurship in more than 80 international and local languages. Moreover, the projector comes with a…

Mori Gouroubera from Benin, Boazi Winston from Tanzania and Neeraj Kumar from India are budding entrepreneurs. Although they come from diverse cultural, social and educational backgrounds, they are closely bound by a common link.

All three of them are part of a network of passionate young entrepreneurs spanning Africa and Asia, who are blazing a trail by trying out innovative and sustainable business models to screen “Access Agriculture” training videos in various languages in their countries.

Their aim is not only to make their business profitable but also to bring about…