Caring for People

Empowering Farming Communities

Building on our long-standing partnerships with farmers – some of whom have worked with us for over half a century – we are committed to supporting farming communities to build more resilient agriculture systems.

What we do

We work closely with farmers, who are at the heart of the food and agricultural value chain, to support them in adopting more sustainable agriculture practices, aiming to enhance farm productivity and environmental sustainability, improve farming community livelihoods and, ultimately, help secure the future of food.

Promoting Regenerative Agriculture

Providing Access to Training

Incentivizing for Preservation

Supporting Smallholder Farmers

Promoting Regenerative Agriculture

We support farmers to implement local regenerative agriculture transition plans. To do so, we develop tailor-made value propositions for farmers that include hands-on training on regenerative farming practices, peer-to-peer knowledge exchanges, support to adopt more sustainable farming inputs, access to efficient data collection systems and financing incentives.

Making Coffee Stronger in Colombia

Climate change challenges coffee production worldwide, by disrupting predictable seasonal temperatures and rainfall patterns. These effects, combined with inefficient farming techniques, can lead to deforestation, soil erosion and consequent sedimentation of waterways.

In 2022, LDC established the Stronger Coffee Initiative to support coffee communities in building resilience to climate change through sustainable farming practices around the world.

In Colombia, lack of sustainable practices combined with low productivity and poor management puts the future of coffee production in danger.

In 2024, LDC launched a project aiming at promoting sustainable coffee production practices in the coffee growing areas and contributing to socio-economic development in the coffee-growing areas of Huila in Colombia.

This project is run in partnership with Starbucks, whose investment and support allow for the continuation and scaling of these initiatives so that regenerative practices can increasingly play a key role in shaping a more sustainable future for the industry.

More than 100 women farmers from Huila have attended training sessions on regenerative agriculture practices focusing on low-carbon coffee farming, and the community also built a tree nursery to grow around 30,600 trees over the next three years.

Providing Access to Training

In our efforts to shape more sustainable global supply chains, it is crucial that we forge trusted relationships with the farmers who are at the heart of food and agricultural chains. That’s why we work alongside them and their communities around the world, supporting them to improve farm production while conserving natural ecosystems.

Working with our partners, we organize training on sustainable farming techniques, responsible use of pesticides, access to markets, accounting, adaptation to climate change and more. Our local agronomic partners provide support and technical advice with a goal to increase farm productivity and incomes for the long-term, drive social and economic development in the community and, ultimately, help farmers to stay in farming.

In addition, LDC’s dedicated agronomists, who are local experts and understand the climate and farming variables that affect each individual farm, design tailor-made value propositions to support farmers in optimizing their crop yields while meeting sustainability goals – including through training.

Incentivizing for Preservation

Preserving forests on and around farms is vital to preserve natural farming ecosystem regulation and climate resilience, a view shared by many farmers we work with and a process that requires collaboration across the entire agricultural value chain.

We engage with farmers, whose production methods are key to conserving natural resources and habitats, supporting them to increase their yields in arable lands through sustainable agriculture practices.

We are investigating ways to unlock barriers to, and aggregate at-scale incentives for, farmers’ conservation efforts.

Supporting Smallholder Farmers

We are committed to supporting and empowering smallholder farmers, recognizing their critical role in the agricultural value chain, especially in coffee, cotton and palm.

This commitment is reflected in various programs and partnerships aiming to provide farmers with education, capacity building, and access to markets and technologies.

Supporting Smallholder Palm Farmers in Indonesia

Small farms, between 1 to 2 hectares, account for approximately 48% of palm oil plantations in Indonesia.

The farmers of these smallholdings are heavily dependent on palm oil production, but have limited access to extension services, affordable inputs, certified seedlings and finance. Many planted their plantations decades ago and need help to access both government and private funds for replanting.

With the support of the Louis Dreyfus Foundation, the project has been supporting farmers to adopt better palm management practices and focusing on facilitating access to loans for replanting, and working to develop additional income streams for farmers, through diversification in horticulture intercropping, and reduce their dependency on palm oil.

The project has also built institutional capacity through the organizational and business development of four cooperatives (two existing and two new), training these cooperatives on the certification process based on Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil production standards.