Bayer Collaborates in Value-Chain Partnerships

As no one can overcome every challenge alone, we establish crop value-chain partnerships to provide smallholder farmers with high-quality inputs, agronomic knowledge, cost-effective financing and risk mitigation solutions, as well as market access to sell their products. These include collaborations with government research institutes, NGOs and international financial institutions. We have already forged a number of key partnerships.

DKsilos

In Southeast Mexico and Central America, we are successfully running an innovative business model with livestock farmers. We engage with more than 40,000 small-scale ranchers and support them in the production of over 100,000 hectares corn silage to secure feed supply, especially during the dry season. Having corn silage to feed their animals when the grass is scarce helps the small producers to reduce the cost of feeding, increases milk production as well as quality and improves the general health of their heard.

We are also creating alliances with the milk-processors industry to secure finance access and the right technical assistance for this farmer segment. We plan to leverage this approach to other countries and regions to embrace new customer segments in smallholder geographies.

Read more about DKsilos and Food Security

Read more about DKsilos in the Harvard Business Review Why Sharing Economic Growth with the Community is Good Business (hbr.org).

Better Life Farming

Better Life Farming is a long-term partnership between Bayer, the International Finance Corporation (IFC, part of the World Bank), Netafim and more than 30 local public and private partners as well as non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This partnership helps smallholder farmers make their farms commercially profitable and sustainable.

Within the partners’ network, the Better Life Farming centers improve access to agricultural products in remote rural regions through the so-called last-mile delivery model. They also offer access to agricultural education and consulting, adapted farming solutions, financing, market access and fair prices. We are also rolling out special approaches for the advancement of women such as the targeted development of women as agricultural entrepreneurs.

In 2022, we increased the number of Better Life Farming centers in India, Indonesia and Bangladesh to more than 2,500 and launched in Mexico and Honduras. We are planning further growth in these regions and opened the first centers in Tanzania.

Better Life Farming was honored for its exemplary stakeholder engagement by the International Public Private Partnership Forum of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) at its Build Back Better Infrastructure Awards 2021.

Read more about Better Life Farming in the Harvard Business Review Making Small Farms More Sustainable - and Profitable (hbr.org).

Visit our Better Life Farming webpage and take a 3D Farm Tour.

Building resilient food value chains to support smallholder farmers requires long-term commitment and strong partnerships. The Better Life Farming Alliance is demonstrating how such partnerships are able to bring true value to farmers and their communities. We are committed to continuing to work with Bayer and our partners to further expand the Alliance and scale it from thousands to millions of farmers.

Alan Johnson , IFC, Lead Smallholder Supply Chains, Agribusiness Advisory

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