Inclusive Business

What is a living income? How is it calculated? Why has it become important for governments, aid agencies and companies in the last few decades? Stephanie, member of the International Board of Directors at Rikolto, shares with us the current status of work on living income, and the solutions, investment, and synergies she has gathered from stakeholders in Peru and in the world. 

Fernando García went from producing in a monoculture model to developing a diversified farm cultivating cocoa, grains, fruit, and timber. The 67-year-old farmer learned about cocoa cultivation from scratch.

50 inspectors of organic certification from 12 cocoa cooperatives in Honduras improved their capacities on the standards and certification processes in this system - contributing to their capacity to stay in the fair trade market, and allowing them to access better prices from chocolate companies such as Chocolats Halba.

Nayeli, 21 years old cocoa farmer dreamt of participating in one of the training courses on cocoa production under agroforestry systems, organised every year at the CURLA university in Honduras. She was over the moon when she found out last year that she could participate. In the course, she learned about so much more than good crop management. Find out how Rikolto and Colruyt Group through the Collibri Foundation became part of her dream.

In 2021, 85 Ecuadorian producer families of the farmer organisation UROCAL obtained a fair payment of 4,100 USD per MT of organic cocoa, a price 39% above what the market offers. The sale to the international brand Ethiquable rewards the good practices of the organisation, as well as the quality and productivity standards achieved with the support of the MOCCA programme of Technoserve and Lutheran World Relief, implemented by Rikolto and funded by USDA.

A story about cucumber cultivation has to be fresh! So try it out for yourself by discovering how diversifying with cucumber production and guaranteeing a stable market for two farmers’ organisations, An Hoa and Minh, is contributing to increasing the income of farmers especially for ethnic groups in Vietnam. At the same time, it supports access to safe vegetables for the population.

Pangoa, a Peruvian farmers’ organisation, is known to produce fine native cocoa of the highest quality. Óbolo Chocolate, in Chile, makes internationally award-winning chocolate from bean to bar, using only organic cocoa from Pangoa. Together they make a winning duo, recognised in international markets.

To meet the high demand for quality rice, rice mills followed a two-year programme to develop professional and reliable businesses. The "Qualiriz: Selling quality rice for a better income" project in the Centre-East region of Burkina Faso aims to supply local markets with quality rice while strengthening the processing and technical capacity of the rice husking units.

UNERIZ's mission is to defend and safeguard the interests of women rice parboilers in Burkina Faso. The organisation supports its members in accessing paddy and credit. The umbrella organization of women parboilers' cooperatives strengthens the technical and management capacities of its members; it facilitates their access to storage equipment and infrastructure and supports them in marketing parboiled rice.

On 12 March 2021, at the Agricultural Extension Centre, Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of Tuyen Quang province, a Memorandum of Understanding Signing Ceremony was held between the Provincial Agricultural Extension Centre, Agricultural Service Centre of districts and Minh Tam Poultry Breeding and Production Cooperative to coordinate the implementation of the model of linking cucumber production and consumption for 2021 in the province.

What happens when you bring together a group of students from different courses under the guidance of experienced coaches to tackle a social problem? You get great ideas. And one of those ideas is about to hit the shelves: Délicé, a granola made from the surplus from processing cranberries.

We are excited to announce that we are advancing our partnership with SCOPEinsight by becoming the newest member of their Local Expert Network (LEN). With them, we have already performed more than 185 evaluations in Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

Thanks to a loan from the Belgian association Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs (OVO), entrepreneur Leonard Shayo can kickstart the production of precooked beans in Tanzania.

Access to finance is the last piece of the puzzle for vegetable farmers in Arusha and Manyara, Tanzania, to increase their production; and for farmer cooperative MUVIKIHO to meet the market demand.

Processing food surpluses into healthy products that are affordable for vulnerable groups: that is the aim of Robin Food. But which products need to be developed? These are the 5 most important insights the project partners learned from the market research.

Covid-19 has challenged our food systems, disrupted them, and magnified issues that existed all along. Yet, after the initial shock of the crisis, food actors are adapting their way of working. And with it, food systems are bouncing back. Find out more about Rikolto's Covid support to our Food Heroes.

Promoting innovation by multiple actors along the chain is a key principle of Inclusive Business. Are innovation processes carried out collaboratively? Who gains from the results? We look at two examples of inclusive innovation in our rice programmes, one from Burkina Faso and one from Indonesia, to answer these questions.

In the south of the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, a neighbourhood initiative is giving life to a participatory process in which both consumers and producers have strengthened links that go beyond the purchase and sale of agro-ecological products.

"Well? Is it working?" In the end, that’s the question we want to see answered for our chain projects with Colruyt Group. This questions might sound obvious, but the answer isn't all that easy.

Knowledge, technology, credit and market information are crucial for farmers to be able to do their job properly. Read about the solutions we uncovered in our supply chain collaborations with Colruyt Group to ensure smallholder farmers in developing countries can access these services as well.

How do you set a correct price for producers? How are risks shared if a deal goes wrong? And what role does certification play in this? Read the answers that Rikolto and Colruyt Group uncovered in their value chain projects.

Establishing inclusive trade relations is human work, as we concluded in the previous article of this series. Getting along well is great, but what matters in the end is business.

A conversation with Rikolto’s Inclusive Business Coordinator, Josephine Ecklu.

Our first steps in building trustworthy relationships between farmers and food companies date back 15 years, to the start of our collaboration with the Belgian retailer Colruyt. In the coming weeks, we will be looking back at the history of what - certainly at the time - started as an unusual partnership.

This year, RIkolto together with his partners in AMEA, organized workshops in Peru and Honduras where to share the improvements on ISO/IWA 29 and the settlement of local webs in these countries which allow to avance further toward an international standard. Get to know how we boosted, together with AMEA, a market ecosystem at the service of professional agricultural organizations.

What can we learn from farmers in Kenya? An exchange visit showed that innovative tools are creating incentives for smallholder farmers to adopt good agricultural techniques and increase productivity.

How to put 'inclusive business' principles in practice? In this article, we give some examples about how farmers get better access to services in specific business cases brokered by Rikolto.

Discover how the inclusive business model between the Consorcio Agrocomercial and La Colonia brings benefit to about 800 farmers and supply the Honduran supermarkets with safe and quality vegetables

In early December, Rikolto had the pleasure to welcome representatives of 7 cities from Africa, Latin America and Asia in Leuven, Belgium. We exchanged about our challenges, solutions and ideas to make local food systems more sustainable. The inclusion of small-scale producers and low-income consumers is key to make this happen.

Why have asparagus flown in from Peru if you can also grow them a stone’s throw away, in Haspengouw? In the Belgian town of Leuven, a short chain platform is being established, aimed at ensuring the town’s inhabitants eat more local produce.

In Peru, Rikolto supports the professionalisation of several cooperatives. In this article we share with you how we strenghtened the business relations between a coffee cooperative and an Australian coffee roasting company.

Koerintji Barokah Bersama Cooperative, Rikolto’s coffee partner in Jambi, Indonesia, is set to export 15.6 tons of Arabica coffee beans to Belgium. The export could take place due to the collaboration between government institutions, private sectors, NGOs, financial institution, cooperative, and coffee farmers.

In 2016, four vegetable farmers’ cooperatives in Jinotega, Nicaragua, started providing safe, high-quality vegetables to 24 national Subway outlets. Facilitated by Rikolto, they devised a business model that puts inclusivity at the forefront. We have examined all the learned lessons of the last 3 years in a comprehensive case study.

How to put 'inclusive business' principles in practice? In this article, we give some examples about how transparency and risk-sharing are reflected in the governance of specific business cases brokered by Rikolto.

In December last year, Rikolto co-signed the Beyond Chocolate charter: the joint ambition of the Belgian chocolate and retail sector, civil society, social impact investors and universities to make Belgian chocolate more sustainable. This industry-wide commitment aims to tackle child labour, combat deforestation and ensure a viable income for local cocoa producers.