GreenPath Food, a horticulture start-up founded in 2015, is Ethiopia’s first certified organic fruit and vegetable producer and works with more than 150 smallholder farmers around Butajira.
An avocado tree in an Aari village in southern Ethiopia, July 2016 (Prof. Mortel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0) [file photo]
The company was founded by former staff of the government’s Agricultural Transformation Agency, The Africa Report reported. Partner farmers grow for GreenPath on a third to half of their plots, across more than 80 hectares. In return the company trains them toward European Union organic certification, gives them credit for seeds and other inputs, and buys their produce.
“A huge proportion of the farmers already have what it takes to grow export-quality produce,” said sales manager Ele Gower. “The issue is really the lack of links to global markets.” Farmers in the area live an average of 44 kilometers from the nearest road.
GreenPath has one staff member for every 25 farmers, and an agronomist visits each farm at least every three weeks. Demand around Butajira was so high that the company had temporarily stopped taking on new farmers.
Avocado is the anchor crop, and most partner farmers switch to it from staples such as maize. Each farm grows at least four crops, which spreads the risk of bad markets and bad weather. “The big idea is to make the smallholder plot as productive as possible,” said co-founder Jacie Jones. “Intercropping makes the land more resilient to climate change and crop failure.”
The company is betting that Ethiopia’s farming future lies with smallholders rather than large commercial farms. Commercial land deals have often angered communities whose plots were taken without adequate compensation, and intensive monocropping wears out the soil. “Smallholder farmers are perfectly capable of producing very high-quality products without tearing up their hedgerows,” Gower said.
Organic premiums do not always reach farmers. A study of Ethiopia’s organic and fairtrade coffee found that, on average, less than a third of the export premium was passed on to growers. GreenPath says its farmers earn on average 22 birr ($0.76) a kilogram, about twice what a non-partner farmer gets. Because much of their land is already organic by default, Jones said, certification can take months rather than the usual three years.
GreenPath had recently closed a $2 million investment round. In May 2019 it opened a new site in Butajira with a packhouse, cold storage, a nursery and drying facilities, which it said would let it triple the number of partner farmers by 2020. It ships fresh fruit and vegetables to London, Amsterdam and Dubai, and herbal teas and botanical ingredients to Britain and the United States.
Growth has limits. New land must be remote enough for smallholders to need the company but close enough to Addis Ababa for logistics. Regulations make it easier for big exporting farms to introduce new crop varieties, and commercial farms receive duty-free benefits based on their size. The company’s long-term goal is a consumer brand. “Fruit and vegetable is the only fast-moving consumer good in supermarkets which is unbranded,” Gower said.
Sources: The Africa Report