VIDEO: A caring cup: Supporting coffee farmers in the Araku Valley, India
In the Araku Valley, India, meet the hardworking coffee farmers Tanager supports through the Andhra Pradesh Farmer Market Readiness Project
In the Araku Valley, India, meet the hardworking coffee farmers Tanager supports through the Andhra Pradesh Farmer Market Readiness Project
Below, in their own words, the president of Dhimsa Coffee Farmer Producer Company and a farmer associated with the FPC talk about how working with Tanager has increased their income and crop yields.
Below, in their own words, the president of Dhimsa Coffee Farmer Producer Company and a farmer associated with the FPC talk about how working with Tanager has increased their income and crop yields.
Tanager is committed helping smallholder farmers in Andhra Pradesh access organized buyers through Collective Marketing. With grant funding support from the Walmart Foundation, Tanager is helping farmers streamline the selling of their produce to reduce reliance on private lenders.
In the latest round of Walmart Foundation grants, international nonprofit organization Tanager will receive more than $2.6 million to extend its successful Farmer Market Readiness Program and help farmers in Andhra Pradesh further expand their knowledge, resources and reach.
In India, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and Farmer Producer Groups (FPGs) are important mechanisms for smallholder farmers to organize their efforts, receive valuable training, connect to buyers of their produce, reduce the influence of pernicious middlemen, and increase income. Tanager’s expertise in the support and growth of FPOs has helped tens of thousands of farmers improve their social and economic outcomes. However, as valuable as engagement with FPOs is for smallholder farmers, many of these organizations still face a persistent problem of gender-inequality – especially at the leadership level.
Today is National Farmers Day in India, an important time to reflect on the plight of the rural farmer and examine how Tanager is working to improve social and economic conditions in rural communities. In the Indian economy agricultural accounts for 18% of the country’s GDP, employing roughly 50% of the country’s workforce. In most of the cases farmers in India work less than an acre of land and rarely own more than 2 acres. These smallholder farmers face a unique set of challenges that Tanager works to address through our co-created projects in India. To understand how Tanager co-creates projects help to improve economic and social outcomes for these farmers, we must first understand the challenges of smallholder farming in India.
Tanager, through the Walmart Foundation-funded Andhra Pradesh Farmer Market Readiness Project, introduced Kinubudi and his Farmer Producer Group to MFN and provided training on how to use the app to connect to buyers. The MFN app is simple to use. With a few clicks, sellers upload what they have to offer allowing the buyers to then bid on the produce. Farmers select the buyer offering the best price. The Farmers Producer Group then collects the produce in bulk and delivers it to the buyer, saving the farmer even more time.
Conditions in Andhra Pradesh, India can make life difficult for smallholder farmers. When drought combines with poor soil health, profits can be slim. To make matters worse, to save money farmers often rely on staple crops as their only food source. These staple crops are high in carbohydrates but low in vitamins and nutrients. This lack of dietary diversity leads to malnutrition, further driving down productivity and incomes. The APFMRP project – implemented by Tanager – is working in Andhra Pradesh to break this vicious cycle and give farmers the opportunity to earn more money and live happier and healthier lives.