ACDI/VOCA uses a comprehensive, market systems approach to increase efficiencies in everything from crop production to marketing along a value chain. This approach leverages collaboration with private sector actors to foster systemic change for lasting impact. ACDI/VOCA’s commitment to gender equality and the empowerment of women and youth is embedded in its private sector engagement approaches, which aim to create inclusive models to increase the adoption of agricultural innovations by women and youth. These models address resource constraints faced by women and youth, such as a lack of access to capital, capacity building, innovative technologies, and land, which are critical for closing the global gap in crop yields achieved by male producers versus women and youth producers.  

Innovative Farm Models 

The Feed the Future Honduras Food Security, Agriculture, and Resilient Market Systems (FARMS) Activity promotes inclusive agriculture systems by implementing production models like agroparks. Agroparks are privately funded production hubs that provide producers with land, innovative technologies, financing, technical support, and access to markets for high-value crops such as sweet potato. These models ensure access to essential resources for vulnerable groups, including women, youth, and ethnic minorities, enhancing their agricultural productivity. Private sector actors benefit from a vertically integrated and more transparent value chain. The Feed the Future Honduras FARMS Activity also supports inclusion through economic development clusters. These mancomunidades, or associations of municipalities that carry out joint projects, consolidate resources and services, thereby addressing barriers to participation in lucrative agricultural markets. 

ACDI/VOCA’s partnership with Inversiones Amalgamadas (INALMA), a local agroindustry export company, is a key example of this initiative. In 2022, INALMA assisted farmers with 39 hectares of land managed with drip irrigation systems to produce vegetables for the food processing export market. By 2023, 74 new growers joined the agropark model (of which 14 are women, 16 are youth, and 11 representing ethnic minorities), with INALMA investing over $313,000 in productive infrastructure. This model provides logistics, market access, and business training, enabling women and youth to engage in profitable production activities despite limited capital and land ownership. 

Outgrower Models 

The USAID Zambia Enterprise Development and Growth Enhanced (EDGE) Activity aims to increase the profitability of agricultural small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by addressing investment constraints, such as access to finance, business management skills, technology, and markets. In partnership with DMI-St. Eugene University, the USAID Zambia EDGE Activity linked two women’s savings groups with 35 members to Farmers’ Outgrower Foundation (FOF), an Activity-supported SME. FOF supports these savings groups with high-quality seeds and guarantees an offtake market for their produce. This initiative ensures that women’s savings groups have ready markets for their final produce, addressing one of the biggest challenges producers face, particularly in rural areas. 

Meanwhile, the Feed the Future Ghana Market Systems and Resilience (MSR) Activity has developed inclusive outgrower models for smallholder farmers in collaboration with leaders from established outgrower businesses and their networks by expanding access to information, training, inputs, and market opportunities for women, youth, and persons with disabilities. The outgrower businesses are primarily commercial farmers who serve as centralized connection points for the smallholder farmers who work with them. These businesses provide critical agricultural services, such as market and technical information, technical and management training, financing, inputs, land preparation services, aggregation, and access to markets for smallholder farmers. The Feed the Future Ghana MSR Activity is coaching outgrower businesses to develop and apply more inclusive training approaches (e.g. hosting demonstration activities at times and locations more accessible for women), support women to take on lead farmer roles within their networks, hosting field days and messaging approaches to reach women, expand engagement with established women’s savings groups so as to improve women’s access to higher quality inputs and land preparation services. 

ACDI/VOCA’s private sector engagement in projects in Honduras, Zambia, and Ghana demonstrates a clear impact on inclusive adoption of bundles of agricultural innovations to overcome market-based barriers to sustainable productivity growth among women and youth. By addressing key resource constraints and fostering partnerships with the private sector to develop more inclusive services, ACDI/VOCA enables women and youth to participate fully in agricultural markets, driving increased productivity and profitability.  

Despite the potential of advanced technologies to revolutionize sustainable agricultural productivity growth, Tanager’s 15-plus years of experience in India have shown that these innovations are not a silver bullet. High investment requirements, technological complexity, and farmers’ risk aversion curtail adoption. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, 82% of farmers own less than 1 hectare of land and monthly incomes were INR 8,061 ($96) in 2019—INR 2,157 ($26) less than monthly agricultural incomes nationwide. Instead, farmers prefer simpler, tangible practices that reduce their cost, labor, or effort.  

Tanager is therefore innovating by adapting the principles of agricultural science to meet smallholder conditions, through on-site, targeted small plot research and the provision of high-quality planting material paired with a strong extension team and digital message to reinforce practice adoption. 

Test, Learn, Scale 

Under the Shubh Mint project, funded by Mars Wrigley, Tanager has been using a lab-to-land approach with more than 24,000 farmers to test, learn from, and scale practical innovations in mint cultivation. This method leverages scientific rigor to identify the factors that can improve mint oil quality and yield within farmers’ financial limitations. It also provides proof of concept to skeptical farmers who have relied on generations of farming tradition. 

Each year, Tanager opens opportunities for “research farmers” who agree to collaborate by devoting a portion of their lands for research. Farmers donate their labor, and Tanager supplies mint planting material, agricultural inputs, and technical assistance. At harvest time, Tanager takes a small sample to analyze results; farmers get to sell the rest of the harvest for profit.  

These research fields are divided into plots ranging in size from 25m2 up to 60m2, with each plot testing a different factor (such as variations in fertilizer quantity or micronutrient combinations–fertilizer quantities or micronutrient combinations) using randomized block designs. For example, this year 60 research farmers piloted mint intercropping with chili or maize, liquid fertilizer application to plants rather than basal application to the soil, and more. Practices that yield the best results—decreased labor or costs, agricultural productivity from the perspective of increased mint oil yield and quality—are shared with the larger farmer supply base for Mars Wrigley’s supply chains, via extension services, demonstration plots, and digital messaging.  

Seven years of this lab-to-land approach has yielded smallholder farmer-validated innovations from soil micronutrient management to water efficiency techniques. The project’s efforts have also significantly reduced usage of expensive fertilizers by minimizing dosages and switching farmers to regimens that increase nutrient uptake from mint plants, thereby increasing productivity. Even the direction in which rows of mint are planted has been tested to leverage sun and wind patterns for maximum photo- and oil synthesis. 

Ram Samujh Yadav, a 76-year-old research farmer, demonstrates the success of this approach in improving productivity. When he was asked to plant chili in between mint rows last year, he said, “I was initially thinking I might lose money.” Instead, he earned INR15,000 ($180) from sales of his chili harvest, reduced his cultivation costs, and increased his oil yield to 72 kg per acre, compared to 38-40 kg per acre when the research program first began.  

Largest Mint Planting Material Supply Chain 

Another innovation arising from the lab-to-land approach is quality stolons. Tanager knew that quality planting material was key to mint yield but was also aware of how difficult it was to access. Tanager partnered with the government’s Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP) to propagate quality mother planting material, and then paired quality stolons with practical technical advice to engage farmers in mint multiplication.  

This process has generated a new, sustainable line of business and income for mint multipliers while expanding general access to quality stolons. For the 2024 planting season, a total of 600 multipliers grew enough quality planting material—932,728 kg—to cover an estimated 30,000 acres. Tanager’s Shubh Mint project now represents the largest planting material supply chain for mint globally. 

Sizeable Improvements 

These seemingly small adjustments have led to significant improvements in mint production while helping farmers to better maintain the long-term productivity of their land. Participating farmers have reduced their irrigation frequency by 15–30%, reduced their production costs by 20%, have increased yields by 20%, and increased their average net incomes by a whopping 125%.  

Importantly, project farmers are becoming ambassadors for change. Yadav and other research farmers, for example, are discussing intercropping on their lands not dedicated to research. Multipliers are sharing the technical advice they receive from Tanager with their clients. These farmers are independently scaling up sustainable agricultural innovations for the region’s benefit. 

Read more about Tanager and the Shubh Mint Project.