Value Chains

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Financial Inclusion

Two ways to get farm loans where they're needed most: the boonies

To get small staple-crop farmers the loans they need, lenders must use new approaches tailored to the 90 percent of smallholders not in farmer organizations.

Value Chains

Chocolate shortage by 2020? How mini loans could save the day

Social lenders aren't meeting poor farmers' financing needs. If commercial buyers don't provide more capital, the world could face shortages of luxury cash crops.

Value Chains

Natural disasters cost corporations $400 billion in 2011, UN says

Environmental disasters not only cripple smallholder farmers, they also mean high costs for the corporations at the buying end of the supply chain. A forthcoming UN report will show just how detrimental those costs can be.

A Mexican weaver stands behind his loom. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28703188@N02/4204678905/">Knoxville Museum of Art</a>

Value Chains

As youth artisans struggle, NGOs beef up business training

A new generation of artisans in the Global South are getting entrepreneurial training with their craft skills.

Thanks to co-ops like COOPCAB, the coffee business is back and brewing in Haiti. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/27632962@N04/3395940600/">Vilseskogen (flickr)</a>

Social Enterprise

As aid to Haiti slows, a private co-op scores loans and turns heads

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

It's hard to get anything to remote parts of Bangladesh--even information. But one nonprofit is using upsells to get there. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/39049548@N05/4162422293/">jankie</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com">Compfight</a>.

Value Chains

Can 'freemium' services pay for small-business training in Bangladesh?

A new business model pioneered by the IT industry is helping pay to spread information in more old-fashioned ways through rural Bangladesh.

Malawian boys are proud of their family's dairy cows. Photo: Jennifer Hyman/Land O'Lakes International Development

Value Chains

Land O'Lakes finds success with dairy micro co-ops in Malawi

The top US dairy cooperative has brought decades of expertise to Malawi, creating micro co-ops that pool their milk for purchase by one of the country's largest processors.

Rural Vietnamese hope to benefit from community latrines. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wanhoff/2684767918/sizes/z/in/photostream/"> Flickr </a>

Value Chains

Unilever will train rural Vietnamese to build demand for toilets

Unilever is rejecting the latrine handout model in favor of a sanitation market sourced and supported wholly by local entrepreneurs.

Koblah Agbeta holds up rice seeds from his farm in Abutia Kpota, Ghana. Quality seeds are critical for a good harvest. Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/48639212@N02/4775000120/">Gates Foundation (Flickr)</a>

Value Chains

GMO wars should take back seat to other farm issues, says DuPoint Pioneer

A corporate seed manufacturer is suggesting that slowing the spread of genetically modified crops would be acceptable, if that's what it takes to keep industrializing Africa's farms.