Every 2SCALE partnership makes conscious efforts to reduce these gender gaps. Consider, for example, the sorghum partnership with Nestlé in Nigeria. This partnership has significantly improved access to fertilizer, agronomy knowledge and remunerative markets for over 700 women in Zaira state in northern Nigeria.
Following a mapping exercise to understand value chain actors (farmers, aggregators, financial institutions, input suppliers, business support services) and their relationships, sorghum clusters were developed in Funtua in Katsina state, Kuki in Kano state, Soba and Zaira in Kaduna state. Each cluster went through a capacity building program that covered various aspects: agronomy, cluster coordination, marketing, access to finance, registration procedures, among others.
2SCALE identified, mobilized and trained 8,236 farmers (27% women) from 47 producer organizations. Nine learning plots were established, of which three were managed exclusively by women. Profit from the learning plots was on average 37% higher than on fields where traditional farmer practice was used.
By October 2018, 716 (30% women) farmers accessed fertilizer credit while as many as 5 000 other accessed improved seed. This was made possible by 2SCALE mediation: contracts from sorghum aggregators were used as an informal guarantee for low-interest loans from LAPO microfinance bank and the Bank of Agriculture. The loans were disbursed to local retailers, who then provided farmers with farming inputs on credit.
Linking women farmers with aggregators working for Nestlé has proven to be extremely effective in increasing yields and production, impacting directly on income, food security and nutrition.
To understand the impacts at household level, we spoke to two women farmers, Zaynab and Maimouna Idriss. Both were married to the same man, who passed on four years ago. Zaynab has five children, Maimuna has four.
“When our husband died four years ago, all we had was a small piece of land, but no money for seeds, fertilizers and agrochemicals. We could not hire plowing services or labor. We would get only 4 bags of sorghum from my farm – today, thanks to 2SCALE and Nestle, we get 8 bags from the same land,” said Zaynab.
But change does not happen overnight. “We were trained on new farming techniques. Then the project linked us with aggregators who sell to Nestlé and thanks to this connection, Lapo Bank gave us loans to buy inputs for planting. This has greatly improved our income,” Zaynab explained.
For Maimouna, Zaynab’s co-widow, one of the achievements she is proud of – in addition to better farming skills and higher yields – is the new organizational skills they have learned. “We set up a cooperative group that we call Yelwa, and I am the secretary of the cooperative. We now have a farm where members of our group farm collectively. We contribute money for farm operations, and this is a completely new thing in our community. We hold monthly meetings. Members make contributions every month, so we are able to run the cooperative well. There is now more profit in farming and women are participating actively in the cooperative. We can even teach others as we have been taught,” said Maimouna.
To meet Nestlé quality standards, Maimouna, Zaynab and 882 other farmers underwent training on post-harvest handling, including the use of PICS bags, which are specially designed to reduce post-harvest losses in stored grain. When grain is stored in farmers’ traditional bags, insects and molds reduce market value by up to 60%. With PICS bags, losses were close to zero.