Writer: Agriculture and Food Cluster Team
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has unveiled the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Olam International’s entry as one of the Top 100, in its 100&Change competition for a single US$100 million grant to help solve one of the world’s most critical social challenges.
Our proposal on Sustainable Rice Platform: Improving Farmer Livelihoods and Fighting Climate Change aims to transform global rice markets by improving smallholder livelihoods in developing countries, reducing the freshwater and carbon footprint of rice production, and offering responsibly cultivated rice in the global market. With US$100 million, we can reach 1 million farmers in five countries in five years, who are the first line of defence against global food insecurity and further environmental, economic and social degradation to catalyze sector transformation.
We are also excited to be included in the Bold Solutions Network, which showcases the highest-ranked proposals from the competition. Featured proposals have undergone extensive evaluation and due diligence to ensure that they can offer real and measurable progress to accelerate social change and help meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Big challenges
One out of four farmers in the world are rice small-scale farmers, who earn on average US$2 to US$7 per day.
Irrigated rice cultivation uses 30-40 percent of the world’s freshwater and is responsible for 10 percent of global man-made methane emissions that contribute to climate change.
Rice production is a leading cause of habitat loss, both in wetlands and forests.
Global rice consumption is projected to grow 13 percent from 2018 to 2027, requiring 500 million tons of milled rice annually.
Bold solutions
Sustainable Rice Platform: Improving Farmer Livelihoods and Fighting Climate Change offers a holistic system to meet the demand for rice sustainably, with small-scale farmers in developing countries as the primary beneficiary. This proven system improves rice production in any geography.
The proposed project will:
Build Capacity: Enable farmers to select the right solutions for their context, implement practicable and sustainable rice farming techniques, and maintain positive outcomes year on year.
Incentivize Change: Offer an integrated approach to ensure suitable incentives for smallholders and communities to shift to climate-smart and sustainable practices.
Facilitate Market Linkages: Connect farmer groups with buyers seeking sustainably produced rice with value chain transparency, allow for credible public claims and market differentiation through sustainable rice, and inspire consumer choices and behaviour.
Deliver Tangible Impacts: Measure the impacts of solutions applied, including on farmer livelihood (income, health), environmental footprint (emissions, water, biodiversity), and market penetration.
Drive Scale: Establish platforms at country-level to drive durable public-private-people partnerships.
Learn more about how our proposal was vetted and named among the highest scoring proposals: https://www.macfound.org/press/press-releases/announcing-top-100-proposals-100-million-grant/