Farm-to-table and other popular green initiatives & inner-city community gardens

(Source: World Economic Forum-Covid Action Platform May 15,2020)

This entrepreneur is helping farmers get food to consumers during lockdown

• As COVID-19 lockdown measures affect food distribution in the Philippines, one woman has found a way to get food from farms to consumers.

• Social entrepreneur Cherrie Atilano has enabled farmers to sell food that otherwise would have been dumped.

• Now she plans to help her fellow citizens set up city farms to improve food security.

When Cherrie Atilano set out to change the lives of farmers in the Philippines she couldn’t have imagined she would one day be helping to feed people in the nation’s capital, Manila, during a global pandemic.

AGREA, the social enterprise she founded, wants to end rural poverty by helping farmers move from subsistence to small-scale commercial farming. But when the Philippines started to lock down to slow the spread of COVID-19, farmers found their routes to market cut off.

The restrictions meant some could not even go into their fields to pick crops and, although trucks were available, drivers were staying at home. Before Atilano launched her #MoveFoodInitiative, farmers had been forced to dump tonnes of edible food.

Atilano, one of the World Economic Forum’s 2020 Young Global Leaders, decided to use her extensive network to appeal to private truck owners to help ship the food to consumers in towns, villages and the capital.

Feeding key workers

By 26 April, the initiative had shipped almost 138,000kg of fruit and vegetables from almost 4,000 farmers, reaching nearly 30,000 families.

In addition, the project is donating food to eight community kitchens set up to feed frontline medical staff treating people with coronavirus. So far more than 2,000 medics have benefited from free food.

Going local

Atilano also plans to encourage the development of urban farms. “It is time to learn how to produce food near to you,” she said. “This is the new normal that we need to prepare for.”

Atilano is not the only entrepreneur helping to get food from farms to urban consumers. Dom Hernandez, Chief Operating Officer of Philippine fast food chain Potato Corner, has set up a scheme to allow farmers in his home province of Benguet to sell directly to consumers.

They call it - MOVE FOOD INITIATIVE powered by AGREA INTERNATIONAL

Helping farmer groups move food from their farms to your tables. This initiative mobilizes food producers an ensures sure market for their products amid logistical challenges during the current pandemic.

For info check these websites:

www.agreaph.com

bit.ly/movefoodiniative

#farmtotable#greeninitiatives#eatgreen

#communitygardens #innercitygardens #Environment