“We’ve also provided close to a million dollars’ worth of micro-financing to farmers in Africa because we understand that as you start a new crop, the African farmers are looking for additional support from a financial standpoint,” said Chandran.
They’re also getting support from a technical standpoint: PureCircle is helping farmers to grow a sustainable business by showing them the benefits of adopting carbon and water friendly practices, like converting bio waste to organic fertilizer.
“The other thing that we do is we teach how to reduce water consumption. Most stevia is rain fed, so it doesn’t require any great amount of irrigation from lakes and other water outlets. But even so as water is brought into the fields, we are able to show them how they can conserve water without really having it go into waste,” said Chandran.
Farmers are also taught to grow the crop on only a third of their land so local food security issues are not brought into question.
Chandran explained that Kenyan farmers have responded positively to the introduction of growing the new high yielding export. He said the guarantee of income at the end of the season allows them to continue to invest and grow the natural sweetener successfully.
“Stevia is not a crop that is grown one season and then you uproot it and plant something else the next season. Sometimes it takes a little more dedication. We’ve had dedicated farmers who have partnered with us [since 2008], close to 15 hundred farmers in 2012. We expect that number to go up to close to around four thousand farmers. ” Chandran noted.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25