Largescale Farming Cotton in the USA

    Economic Opportunity

    We want farmers and people engaged in the agri and food production system to be able to earn a decent income and be resilient to external shocks.

    The vast majority of our farmer network are smallholders, with land of just one or two hectares. Combined with the vagaries of weather, infrastructure and global market pricing, many of them operate on a fine line between success and failure, with little capacity to adapt, let alone grow.

    Large-scale farmers, such as those from whom we source onions and garlic in the USA, or cotton in Australia also face challenges regarding climate change, water security and cost of production.

    Measuring Progress

    Reducing living income gaps of farmer households is critical to farmer livelihoods and to supply-chain sustainability. Creating economic opportunity for farming communities has many interdependencies and benefits. Read about some of our activities over the last year, and our performance against the goals we have set our business in our most recent annual report.

    Partnering for Scale


    We continue to review our own operations and supply chain, to make positive changes. However, we cannot make the level of change required alone. We are active in a number of sector-wide initiatives and are collaborating with customers to help them mitigate their environmental impacts.

    We acknowledge that alone we can’t make the scale of change at the speed we would like. Here are some examples of organisation we partner with to achieve greater impact in this area.

    Some of the initiatives we maintain to engage our farming network and increase their economic opportunities include:

    • Training on good agricultural practices and extension services for crop, fish and poultry famers
    • Access to finance, agri-inputs, climate-resilient seeds, and labour-saving tools and equipment
    • Business management training and support for farmer collectives and cooperatives
    • Access to market information systems and agronomy advice to help farmers increase their yield, and to access market through our proprietary apps.

    Initiatives Supporting Economic Opportunity

    Increasing Rice Yield

    125% increase in rice yields in Nigeria through partnerships.

    Parity for Rural Women

    Olam’s ambition to improve smallholder farmer livelihoods can’t be fully achieved without addressing gender equality.

    Coffee “LENS”

    Standing for “Livelihoods, Education and Nature at Scale”, LENS sets Olam Coffee’s first formal sustainability targets for 2025.

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