To be socially responsive, Idan – Agro has created a gender desk dedicated to female smallholder farmers and has also developed two main programs to focus on women and youth as described below:
Idan Agro has created a gender desk headed by a female staff. The desk is dedicated to female smallholder farmers to ensure their needs are better understood and prioritized.
This is a food security and poverty alleviation program which is aimed at supporting Idan Agro’s female smallholder farmers. These female smallholder farmers have limited land access to farmlands. They are supported to acquire farmlands and supported with cultivation of commercial value crops such as maize and soybeans in addition to their groundnuts, cowpea, sesame and millet for additional income and improved food security. Currently, Idan Agro has over 800 female smallholder farmers benefiting from this program, and they cultivate a total of about 2400 acres.
This project is aimed at using 5% of Idan Agro’s profits to support youth farmers by providing them with agronomic training, land preparation, input supply, and business management skills. This is to ensure young people are adequately supported to build sustainable career paths in agribusiness and to replace the aging farmer population. Currently, Idan Agro has 75 youth smallholder farmers cultivating a total of about 780 acres.
Idan Agro was also able to secure a $10,000 grant from Root Capital to directly support 27 youth farmers under Idan Agro’s Youth Development and Empowerment Program to do additional 5 acres of cultivation in the 2022 cropping season.
Idan Agro through its partner, Root Capital (an impact investment fund) was able to secure a $10,000 grant to support directly 27 youth farmers out of the 75 youth farmers under our Youth Development and Empowerment project to do additional 5 acres of cultivation to what Idan- Agro is already providing them in this cropping season of 2022.
Idan Agro also participated in a Covid-19 resilience challenge fund being sponsored by Palladium through Mobilizing Financing for Agriculture in Ghana and was able to secure a grant of $270,000 dollars to support 1200 women and youth farmers to do additional one acre of soya beans and maize each to their current production for the 2022 cropping season.
Both projects are currently on going.
Idan Agro is in strategic partnership with International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) to develop and measure its Economic, Social and Governance (ESG) impacts. With CIAT, Idan Agro has been supported to develop an ESG results framework which is currently being implemented. In total, Idan Agro will deliver 25 ESG results.
Increased sustainable use of land, water and vegetation as a result of nature friendly activities. We are pursuing 10 Key Results Areas under our ESG framework to achieved the Environmental outcome.
Improved community livelihoods and resilience through participatory and inclusive business operations. We are pursuing 7 Key Results Areas under our ESG framework to achieve the social outcome.
Enhanced corporate governance culture to enable mainstreaming of ESG strategy across all operations. We are pursuing 8 Key Results Areas under our ESG framework to achieved the governance outcome.
