Building Businesses with Nutrient Enriched Crops

Building Businesses with Nutrient Enriched Crops


Nutrient Enriched Crops (NECs) are a proven agriculture-based strategy tailored to meet the nutritional needs of smallholder farming families and others dependent on staple foods, and this should be part of the food system transformation solutions. These are varieties of rice, wheat, maize, beans, and other common staples that have been conventionally bred to contain nutritionally significant levels of iron, zinc or vitamin A - all micronutrients that are essential for maintaining good health and ensuring proper mental and physical development in children. These crops are proven to improve nutrition and health outcomes when eaten regularly. 

Small and Medium Enterprises - including seed producers, farmers, aggregators and processors - are critical actors in ensuring access to food and nutrition security particularly for the poorest consumers. They integrate markets thereby reducing poverty and hunger; create opportunities that improve equity; innovate and scale solutions for nutrition and sustainability.  

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) and HarvestPlus understand that micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises are key to national growth and development and are collaborating to support the commercialisation of biofortified crops in Africa and Asia.   

In this webinar, we shall focus on the opportunities for the adoption of biofortified crops by SMEs and experience sharing of some of the businesses associated with biofortification. This webinar will;  

  • Generate awareness and interest amongst the food processors, retail markets including digital marketplaces and associated businesses in the biofortified foods supply chain.   
  • Explore available opportunities for the adoption of biofortified crops in the existing value chains.  
  • Share experiences of businesses in the biofortification value chain.  

The event will be moderated by Peter Goldstein, Head of Strategic Communications, HarvestPlus and it will feature:

  • Dr. Lawrence Haddad (Executive Director, GAIN) 
  • Arun Baral (CEO, HarvestPlus) 
  • Ishank Gorla (Programme Lead, CBC - GAIN) 
  • Ravinder Grover (Programme Lead, CBC - HarvestPlus)
  • Dr., Javed Ahmad (Chief Scientist, Wheat Research Institute, Faisalabad - Pakistan) 
  • Rose Mutuku (MD Smart Logistics Solutions - Kenya) 
  • Fortunatha Mmari (Managing Director and Founder, AFCO Investment - Tanzania) 
  • Mr. Shashank Kumar (Founder and CEO, DeHaat ‘- India) 
  • Rogers Mugambi (Commercial Lead, AgriScope Kenya) 
  • Aribisala Pelumi (CEO, Cato Foods - Nigeria)

Audience are encouraged to pose questions for speakers, share experiences and contribute to the conversation.  

This webinar will be translated to Hindi and Bengali. 

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