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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.

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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.

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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.

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Value Chains

Why the biggest brand sometimes isn't the best innovation partner

A new case study of the Ethiopian bean industry includes a depressing anecdote reminding us that innovation rarely starts at the top of the market.

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Value Chains

As Chinese farming goes global, some see risks

The reorientation of Chinese agriculture to an export-centric model is creating unprecedented domestic growth, but there may be a hidden cost to developing nations.

Nigerian farmers head to a meeting for the latest information.Photo: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/gatesfoundation/5782066016/">Gates Foundation (flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

Nestle: Food security is not a philanthropic activity

Poverty and hunger in Central and West Africa can't be solved by donated food. Nigeria needs to rebuild and boost its own agricultural economy. Nestle has a plan to do just that.

Kenyan flower farmers are making more money thanks to a new middleman. <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldbank/2629345354/">Photo: World Bank (flickr)</a>

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Value Chains

Your Walmart bouquet may have been grown by these Kenyan farmers

Flower growers in Kenya have plenty to sell, but no buyers. Meanwhile big-box retailers in the U.S. and UK want more flowers. New research reveals that a middleman connecting them could be profitable for both.

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Value Chains

Finally, straight talk on trade: It's good, but not for everything

One of the less plausible pieties of international economists—the claim that globalization doesn't substantially hurt the middle class in rich countries—may be dying, the New York Times reports.