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Twenty-seven year old Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu has a passion for information, agriculture and protecting the environment. Growing up in Nigeria, he knows firsthand that there is a lack of information flowing throughout the villages. Farmers especially don't have access to reliable market information and modern farming techniques which results in small volume turnout and unavailability of input materials for over 70 million small farmers living in the rural areas of Nigeria. This ultimately exacerbates rural poverty, hunger and food insecurity.

In 2003, Nnaemeka founded The Smallholders Foundation to improve the flow of information. He created a radio show called the "Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio" to deliver timely and relevant information through local radio stations on priority topics in agriculture and environmental management to boost small farmers’ productivity and income. Six farmers have teamed up to share daily broadcast information in the local Igbo language which enables 250,000 farmers listeners acquire contemporary agricultural and environmental management techniques, receive daily market information, advertise their farm products and learn critical business skills. Their broadcast information covers techniques in crop production, livestock rearing, environmental conservation, health, soil and water management, seeds, local and international markets, exports documentation, micro credit and access to a question and answer service. Business skills such as market research, cost benefit analysis, opening bank accounts, accounts keeping, store records keeping and business planning are also broadcasted. Smallholders utilize daily broadcast information to decide what to produce, when to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce.

Their long-term vision is to eradicate poverty and hunger through the delivery of valuable and self-sustaining information. Small farmer’s household income and output per acre of farmland will increase, families will be able to afford for their children to go to school, nutrition will increase and food security will be strengthened. This information will also aid in conserving water, soil and wood resources sustainably. Smallholders will know where, when and how outputs can be marketed to national and international markets. Better storage facilities will be built as they adapt to climate change.

The Smallholders Foundation is a finalist in the Unreasonable Institute's Marketplace challenge. To help this project take flight, please consider sponsoring Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu to help him receive training, mentorship, and access to capital.

The Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace gives the world a chance to weigh in on which 25 social ventures from around the world will be selected to attend the Unreasonable Institute’s mentor-intensive, 10-week, summer incubation program. The 34 finalists profiled on their marketplace have been selected from an initial pool of 284 ventures from 45 countries and, from our perspective, are working on social ventures that future generation may one day recall as having changed the course of history. The first 25 of these 34 ventures to raise the $6,500 it costs to attend the Unreasonable Institute will be the ones selected to attend. And the decision rests in your hands!

posted by UnreasonableInstitute on 3/15/2010 6:12 pm

Nigeria’s greatest biodiversity wealth is found in rural poor communities. However, 70% of Nigeria’s 150 million people are rural dwellers but has been denied access to priority natural resources management information due to the collapse in agricultural extension services, the unreliable power supply system and lack of infrastructure to support rural internet penetration. This continuous inaccessibility to critical information has exacerbated environmental degradation, deepened rural poverty and accelerated food insecurity.

In 2007, our organization The Smallholders Foundation set up The Smallholders Farmers Rural Radio to fill this vacuum by designing and presenting daily sustainable agricultural management and environmental conservation in the local Igbo Language reaching 250,000 listeners living in remote and isolated communities of Imo State, Nigeria.

We inform, educate and improve the natural resources management capacity of small farmers by broadcasting information in alternatives to slash and burn agriculture burning, preventing erosion and flooding, sustainable water management, enacting and enforcing laws to protect community streams and rivers and using drought-resistant plants. Others are on growing salt-tolerant and heat-tolerant crops , livestock management practices and livestock density, restoring degraded rainforests, wetlands and mangrove ecosystem, sustainable fish harvesting technologies , planting multi-use trees, coping with extreme weather events, agro forestry, wildlife management, ecotourism, sustainable soil management, pest and diseases and using renewable energies. Others are farm management, food safety and small scale irrigation.

We also embark on field extension services to demonstrate practical techniques for sustainable environmental conservation for smallholders.

We generate feedback from listeners, through the deployment of voice input solar powered mobile devices distributed to smallholder listener clubs. This is a simple solar powered communications system intended to link those off the cellular and electrical grid with the rural radio. The device effectively records user voice input and asynchronously forwards the voice feedback to the radio station via an ad-hoc delay-tolerant network. It has low power footprint, ease of use and use of 802.11 wireless connectivity between devices ands its antenna installed at the radio station. It does not incur any cost to the user, but offers a mechanism for asking questions.

Rural dwellers utilizes daily broadcast information to decide what to produce, when to produce, how to produce and for whom to produce as such boosting their yields and income. Through our continuous impact assessment, we state that 65% of our present listener’s livelihood has been changed because household income has improved. The volume of quintiles/output per acre of smallholder’s farmland has also increased remarkably. Soil degradation is reducing and wood resources are being conserved sustainably. Livestock health has improved and livestock diseases curtailed. Wildlife is being protected. Smallholders are building better products storage facilities and now have basic knowledge about climate change. In general food security and environmental conservation has been strengthened.

The Carbon 14 Award will enable us procure a 3,500 watts FM transmitter , state- of- the-art studio equipment, field equipment, broadcast center equipment, renewable energy supplies, recruit additional small farmers to work as radio presenters and procure internet connection equipment. Through the deployment of this equipment we will cover the 27 local government areas of Imo State reaching 3.9 million daily listeners with critical and sustainable natural resources management information.

Sourse:CARBON4

In the first year of an exciting initiative funded mainly by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, 42,000 smallholder farmers all over the world have been involved in selling food to WFP through the 'Purchase For Progress' pilot programme.

BAMAKO -- Faso Jigi, a federation of farmers’ associations in Mali, scored a first this year. Its 2,500 members were finally able to participate and win a tender to sell 600 metric tons (MT) of cereals to WFP.

“This year the sale was quick, they paid us promptly and we made a good profit. If they do the same after the next harvest it will be a good thing,” said 60-year-old Mamadou Traoré, a longtime member of Faso Jigi.

Up to now most farmers in Mali – particularly those with small plots and low incomes – were unable to meet the requirements of WFP tenders. Faso Jigi made its breakthrough largely because of changes in tender procedures brought in by Purchase for Progress (P4P). Under the pilot programme, WFP actively looks for bids from farmers organizations and is willing to purchase small quantities.

Engage in markets

P4P was launched a year ago to improve smallholders’ ability to engage in and benefit from agricultural markets. The starting point is the agency’s purchasing power, part of which can be used to support smallholder farmers as they produce and sell their staple commodities.

Supported by the P4P framework, poor farmers – most of whom are women – can boost their incomes and see how to connect to markets in general. Overall, 21 countries have been selected to pilot this approach over five years.

Since its launch in September 2008, P4P has purchased food commodities from 30 farmers' organizations with some 42,000 members. Overall, in 2009, WFP expects to buy up to 55,000 MT of food from smallholder farmers – either directly from farmer organizations or through other marketing platforms such as warehouse receipts systems or commodity exchanges. More than 5,400 farmers have also been trained in a variety of skills like basic management, farming techniques, quality control and post-harvest handling.

Expertise of partners

WFP is not alone in this enterprise. It relies on the expertise of partners that include governments, international organizations and the private sector. They provide technical skills, training, facilitate access to inputs and credit.

WFP’s has started to use a range of procurement approaches tailored to benefit smallholder farmers more directly. In Zambia, WFP is working with the Agricultural Commodity Exchange (ZAMACE) to help farmers sell their produce; in Uganda and Tanzania we are buying through warehouse receipts systems; in Guatemala, rather than buying directly from farmers, WFP links them with the manufacturer of Vitacereal – a locally produced blended food. WFP buys and distributes Vitacereal to its beneficiaries.

With P4P, WFP is turning local procurement into an effective tool to address global hunger. Our vision is that by 2015, agricultural markets will have developed in such a way that many more low-income or smallholder farmers will produce food surpluses, sell them at a fair price and increase their incomes.  With this cash, the farmers are then able to purchase services such as education and healthcare that improve their livelihoods.

Sourse:World Food Programme