TechnoServe 2018 Annual Impact Report

Dairy Farmers Making a Cool Profit

Not long ago, dairy farmers in the Ahmednagar district of India’s Maharashtra state were caught in an economic trap. There was no formal market for their milk, so investing in improved production would be a risky proposition; at the same time, producing low volumes and low-quality milk meant that they would struggle to attract good buyers. “I never thought dairy farming could be a profitable business for me,” recalled Mahendra Gayake, who owned two dairy cows.

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Starting in 2015, TechnoServe worked with global healthcare company Abbott on a project to address these problems in ways that were meaningful to farmers, with trainings on animal care, finance and women’s empowerment. The project was designed to help one of Abbott’s suppliers access the high-quality, antibiotic- and aflatoxin-free milk that the firm needed for its nutrition business in India, while also providing more sustainable livelihoods for smallholder dairy farmers.

“Today, I am running a business that is giving me profits. I am a businessman.”

Mahendra Gayake

One of the most important accomplishments was fixing a gap in the dairy value chain. Without cold storage, milk could lose quality or go bad by the time it reached buyers, so the program recruited local entrepreneurs in each village to manage cooling tanks and collect the milk produced in the community. “I am learning a lot about clean milk production and how to manage milk procurement thanks to the training provided through TechnoServe,” said Gaurav Shirsath, one of the entrepreneurs. As farmers saw the opportunity to sell clean, high-quality milk and earn a premium, they decided to make the needed changes to meet quality standards and increase production. After receiving training from the program, Mahendra changed how he fed his cows, and adopted new cleanliness practices to prevent disease. His profits rose from practically nothing to $700 per month. “Today, I am running a business that is giving me profits. I am a businessman,” Mahendra says.
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With his extra earnings, he has improved the family’s home and sends his children to good schools. He has also taught his daughters what he learned about dairy farming and financial management, so that they can help run their own farms one day.

NIRMAL DHARA PROJECT BY THE NUMBERS

11.8

ROI

9,935

Beneficiaries

$9.5 million

Financial benefits

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Finding New Markets for an Old Product

Every morning, Irenice de Fátima Bicalho is at work on her farm before 3 a.m.; when the sun comes up over the low, green hills and red earth of Minas Gerais state in Brazil, she is already busy milking the cows. Her husband’s family has owned the small farm for a century, and for the last 60 years, generation after generation has produced artisanal cheese. When Irenice and her husband took over, she ran the business the same way: producing local-style cheese and selling it through informal markets in the nearest town.

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Irenice dreamed of growing the business, however, and booming demand throughout Brazil for high-quality cheese offered her the opportunity. But she faced obstacles. Like the other estimated 700 small-scale cheesemakers in the region, she lacked certification that would allow her to sell through more profitable, formal channels. And she didn’t have the training she felt she needed to manage a growing business.
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To address that need, she signed up to participate in the Crescer program, an Anglo American-TechnoServe collaboration to stimulate local economic development in a rural region of Minas Gerais that faces high levels of poverty. The program is building the capacity of local entrepreneurs, helping young people acquire the skills they need to join the workforce, and linking small businesses to stable buyers and profitable markets across several promising sectors, from honey to eco-tourism.

“You learn how to do the business calculations, really how to manage a farm. In the past, I didn’t know what was going on, whether I was making a profit or a loss.”

Irenice de Fátima Bicalho

For cheesemakers like Irenice, there has been a dramatic change. The program has helped them to build their business and technical capacity and meet the food safety and quality standards required to get their products certified. The program also worked with the government to repeal regulations that prohibited the sale of artisanal cheese across state lines, opening up new markets to the cheesemakers. The program has also helped the participants to diversify their offerings by starting to market ripened cheese, which earns better prices.
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Irenice was enthusiastic about the training she received. “You learn how to do the business calculations, really how to manage a farm. In the past, I didn’t know what was going on, whether I was making a profit or a loss,” she said. She applied what she learned to improve operations on her farm, and she became the first cheese manufacturer to obtain certification for her products in the region. As a result, her sales increased by 40 percent, and she is working to create even more opportunities. She is the head of newly formed local producer association, whose 30 members have opened a store to sell artisanal cheese and other hand-made products. And with her son now studying agronomy, she dreams that a new generation will be able to grow the family business even more.

Crescer PROJECT BY THE NUMBERS*

5.1

ROI

230

Beneficiaries (to date)

$4.4 million

Financial benefits (to date)

* This ROI is for the first phase of the Crescer program. An ROI for the current phase will be calculated at the completion of the program. Beneficiaries and financial benefits include all phases of Crescer to date.

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Turning Cashews into Job Opportunities

As Mélanie Ahoka walks the factory floor, she sees hundreds of women hard at work, processing raw cashew nuts. She identifies with them: she, too, is receiving a steady wage for the first time due to Benin’s cashew boom.

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The mother of two was once a self-employed, seasonal math tutor, struggling to support her younger siblings and children with irregular wages. Three years ago, she took a job at Fludor, one of Benin’s largest cashew processors. At the time, she was one of three people in her unit; now, she manages the unit’s nearly 200 workers.

That growth has been helped by the BeninCaju project, which is designed to accelerate the cashew sector’s development, from tree to market. It is training farmers, improving Benin’s domestic processing capacity, partnering with the government to implement policies to support the sector, and linking the cashews to global markets.

At Fludor, TechnoServe staff have provided advice and training about how to improve efficiency, worker safety, and good manufacturing practices. “TechnoServe’s assistance was invaluable and decisive,” said Roland Riboux, CEO of Fludor-Benin. The company plans to source cashews from 20,000 farmers and employ 1,200 workers—the vast majority of them women—in its processing plants. For Mélanie, that kind of factory job has made a real difference. “This salary allows me to…provide for my children. I don’t need to wait for my husband to buy what I need,” she said.

“My message to the world is that cashews are not just nuts…They allow people to find job opportunities.”

Mélanie Ahoka

The sector’s growth is creating new opportunities to use cashew byproducts, too. In 2016, TechnoServe helped local entrepreneurs launch Sweet Benin, which is bottling the juice of the cashew apple, the fruit of the cashew tree. Sweet Benin sold more than 100,000 bottles of the cashew apple juice in 2018 and created employment for dozens of women. TechnoServe is also helping Fludor find productive uses for the cashew nut shell, extracted during processing: starting in 2019, the shells will be used as bio-fuel to power one of Fludor’s processing plants.

Across Benin, opportunity is flourishing around the cashew crop. As Mélanie said, “My message to the world is that cashews are not just nuts. They are not just a fruit. They allow people to find job opportunities.”

Benincaju Project BY THE NUMBERS*

8,866

Beneficiaries (to date)

$16.3 million

Financial benefits (to date)

* ROI will be calculated at the completion of the program.

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Faces of Change

Dairy Farmers Making a Cool Profit

NIRMAL DHARA PROJECT BY THE NUMBERS

Finding New Markets for an Old Product

Crescer PROJECT BY THE NUMBERS*

Turning Cashews into Job Opportunities

Benincaju Project BY THE NUMBERS*