Duff Young

With the help of Professor Manish Raizada from the University of Guelph, we’re excited to be developing a special venture – initially in west Africa through the agricultural outreach centre at the University of Ghana.

The program consists of a special fruit storage ‘baggie’ that contains twenty small colour-coded tubes of seeds and a pamphlet explaining the different plants. The seeds make up a whole portfolio of strong and diverse perennials developed by local experts. With instructions on locating the rows optimally, farmers can get good yield from a diverse mix of nutritional staples, cash crops, medicinal plants and even nitrogen-enriching varietals.

Our SAK initiative combines agricultural science with micro entrepreneurship – because the seeds used are able to be replaced in 12-14 weeks and resold by the farmer in the same clever planning package that guided his professional new system. Yield improvements are as obvious as the farmer’s enthusiasm.

The program is highly scalable, locally-tested and incredibly cheap. Each SAK costs just $0.50 or so and can be resold for $10 again and again.