HortiBenin
Strengthen vegetable production, incomes as well as food security
Since January 2021 Agriterra is ‘back in Benin’, through the RVO funded programme Horti-Benin, where we play a modest but important role.
Agriterra's participation was developed in 2020 and handed over to the Agriterra Burkina Faso team for adjustments and implementation, because Benin is Burkina Faso's neighbor country, and also French speaking.
The video below shows already some nice progress made after one year of collaboration between Holland Green Tech (project lead), Rijk Zwaan, Go&Grow Solutions, TU Delft, Catch Your Moment (for the videos) and Agriterra.
Agriterra's role has become more important in the project: where initially the project was developed for 40 Pilot/Champion producers, of which five were estimated to be linked to cooperatives, our initial role was to identify (scoping) and assess the horticulture cooperatives in two regions in Benin and accompany them in developing a business plan.
However, with the main "access to market" partner stepping out of the project mid 2021, because of the financial impact of Covid on the company, the marketing has now become a key concern in the project. Initially it was foreseen most vegetables would be sold to the Nigerian market. Now the national market has become more important (because the borders with Nigeria are closed).
Holland Green Tech has asked Agriterra to put more emphasis on the collective marketing component and we increase our involvement in bringing the cooperatives directly in contact with buyers, develop marketing plans for the cooperatives based on demands from buyers, and possibly work with the individual growers to see in how far they are interested to either sell through existing cooperatives, or consider to form a marketing cooperative themselves.
