Nestlé and USAID Form JV for High Quality Maize

07 Dec 2016 --- The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded Agricultural Development and Value Chain Enhancement Program (ADVANCE) and Nestlé have officially signed a memorandum of understanding to establish a partnership for a regular supply of high-quality agricultural commodities especially maize in Ghana. 

This event was attended by Emmanuel Dormon, Chief of Party for USAID-ADVANCE, Freda Duplan, Managing Director of Nestlé Ghana. “USAID-ADVANCE supports farmers to increase their productivity and improve access to high end markets. Thus, we see this collaboration with Nestlé as an excellent opportunity and motivation for the smallholder farmers to further improve their agronomic and post-harvest management practices to meet the quality requirements of high end industrial users shared Emmanuel Dormon.” 

“We work to instill, spread and scale up the adoption of improved practices with the ultimate aim of increasing incomes and adequate access to good quality and safe food at all times,” he added.

Freda Duplan in her opening remarks underlined that the Nestlé Cereal Plan is supporting the company’s commitment to increase local sourcing as part of its Creating Shared Value initiatives. The Nestlé Cereal Plan aims at enabling farmers to produce better quality grain which will generate higher revenue for them and improve their livelihood. The quality grain which is used by the company as ingredient for its products, will also be used to feed their families and this will helps in ensuring food safety for the farmers and their families, for the community and for the consumers.

Nestlé is committed to creating inclusive communities under its Rural Development Framework, an approach to understand and design the immediate supports to farming communities and where contribution is the most needed.   Through its knowledge leadership in the area of Research and Development, the Rural Development Framework continuously help to introduce new farming methods and technologies that can ensure sustainable grain production. 

Under this new partnership, USAID ADVANCE and Nestlé Ghana will work together to build the capacity of farmers and aggregators in the three Northern regions to ensure farmers produce maize that meets Nestlé’s quality standards.

The objective of this partnership is to increase the quality of the overall grains supply in Ghana, by training 113,000 farmers by 2018.
    
USAID ADVANCE will train selected farmers and aggregators on agronomic, post-harvest protocols and good storage practices which have been developed by Nestlé to reduce the mycotoxins in upstream value chain.