When Covid-19 disrupted supply chains and exacerbated the financial afflictions of smallholder farmers across Southern Africa, Bayer collaborated with various agricultural organisations to prevent the health crisis from turning into a hunger crisis as well.
Liza Bohlmann, communications business partner at Bayer Crop Science, says through the Better Farms Better Lives initiative they have distributed maize seeds and vegetable seeds to smallholder farmers in Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa.
The initiative is part of Bayer’s response plan to Covid-19 and provides farmers the help they need to address their immediate challenges while building resilience for the future.
Bohlman says this initiative was launched in the second half of 2020. The aim was to reach out and support up to 2 million smallholders farming on less than 10 hectares of land, who could benefit from hybrid seed products.
“With [sic] this partnership with Grain SA, we managed to reach some 10 000 smallholder farmers. That is immense. We served the farmers with 2kg of seeds each, information leaflets and agronomic outreach. This was really to overcome the gap that was created by the current pandemic, by no fault of their own, to make sure that our small-scale commercial farmers remain in business,” says Bohlmann.
The initiative also reached tobacco farmers, whose cash flow was interrupted by the tobacco sales ban.
“When the tobacco farmers had no income… they couldn’t buy the main seed they use during their crop rotation. Through the Better Farms Better Lives initiative we could help the farmers stay in business; not just to stay in business but to stay in business with very high-quality seeds.”
Other projects
Parusha Pillay, government affairs and BBBEE transformation manager at Bayer Crop Science, adds that Bayer believes in long-term-focused investments in local communities.
“We believe that we have a responsibility not only because it’s the right thing to do, but it’s also important for the economic growth of the industry and the country,” she says.
Pillay explains that their projects have specific focus areas. These include food security and nutrition, access to health programmes for vulnerable groups in low-income communities, public health and development programmes for smallholder and emerging farmers.
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