In a recent blog article published in Business Fights Poverty at the end of May called "An Integrated Approach to Sustainable Food Production," the Senior Vice President of Development at TechnoServe discussed the Shegole Coffee Cooperative and its way to support coffee farmers who produce both cash crops such as coffee and food crops such as maize for subsistence. The method is through intercropping maize with beans so that farming production is increased.
The Shegole Coffee Cooperative, part of Limu Union as well as TechnoServe, sells some of its coffee at Caffe Streets, a coffee house in Chicago. So far, there are about 400 farmers part of the cooperative as a whole, which was founded in 2005.
Why This Trend Is Growing
- Intercropped Farming
- Opportunity for farms to increase production by implementing intercropping techniques that combine cash crops and food crops.
- Sustainable Food Production
- Growing interest in integrated approaches to agricultural production that support both cash crops and food crops for subsistence.
- Cooperative Farming
- Rise in farmer cooperatives that collaborate to sell their products to niche markets and establish sustainable supply chains.
Industries Being Reshaped
- Agriculture
- Opportunity for farms to adopt intercropping methods to increase productivity and support sustainable food production.
- Coffee
- Trend in coffee industry to source sustainably produced coffee from farmer cooperatives that implement intercropping techniques.
- Food Service
- Growing demand for coffee houses and food service establishments to source coffee from cooperatives that prioritize sustainable food production.
