Announcements

For most women in rural Ghana, financial empowerment remains an elusive reality. This was certainly the case for Rose Yeboah, until she joined the Forever Chocolate Pilot Project and launched a wildly successful soap business.

There was no way for small-scale farmers in Ecuador to anticipate the COVID-19 pandemic more than a year ago when they started diversifying the products they grew and mapping efficient paths to get them to hungry urban markets. But when the coronavirus hit the South American nation hard, these farmers found themselves well-prepared to keep homebound customers fed.

Given the plight of present-day coffee farmers, one might assume the coffee business is largely unprofitable, perhaps plagued by razor thin margins and floundering demand. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Despite the bright spot coffee can be in our lives, it has a dark side — a sinister past that has spurred a troubling present. During centuries of global coffee production, a common theme has emerged: the oppression of people of color for profit.

Systemic racism in agriculture is painfully obvious. Why has it taken a new Civil Rights movement to clearly expose the sordid roots and present-day inequalities in food and farming?

The beekeeping industry in Mexico is facing a total estimated loss of 10.7 billion pesos ($576 million) a year due to cheaper competition in the form of adulterated honey coming in from other countries. Small-scale apiarists, like those who work with Heifer Mexico, are hit the hardest.