This Is How You Change a Farmer’s Ways

A brief recap from my last article: The food supply chain is one of the key targets of the sustainability agenda. Planting, growing, harvesting, transporting and marketing all the products that sustain life has a direct impact on Earth’s systems, ranging from land, water and air. All the participants in these processes are impacted by the objectives; for example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. 

There is a key ingredient along the food chain: Information. Consumers are listening carefully to improvements dealing with the environment and safe practices toward a more conscious use of natural resources; companies are responding to the call by investing time and resources to change their practices. Letting everyone know what we all are doing toward this goal is paramount to making this change happen, and fast.

Regenerative agriculture is the term we now use to address the way we can improve the methods to produce food, while mitigating the impact on ecosystems and capturing CO2 in the ground. It sounds too simple when I write it but imagine yourself asking a traditional farmer to change his/her ways. Where to begin?

I can use a firsthand example. Grupo Bimbo, the largest industrial baker in the world, started down a sustainable path a few years ago. First from within, and later,  launching a program called BEAR (Bimbo Environmental Alliance to Reduce CO2) to encourage its suppliers to follow the same sustainable goals and face the challenges experienced by the supply chain. Among those suppliers, we find the wheat farmers, who are the base of Grupo Bimbo’s supply chain. BIMBO’s ,led by Hector Ibancovichi, went to Sonora and Sinaloa, the northwestern part of Mexico with the most production of wheat in the country, to meet with people and to  just listen to them.

They reached out to many organizations that are already in different stages of progress, but here I will present one: SAFINSA, a group of companies devoted to empowering farmers in terms of marketing their crop, enhancing their agricultural practices, and providing inputs and finance, while improving their livelihoods.

SAFINSA is led by Irene Lerma and her son Joaquin Sanchez. They started this business with a lot of courage, knowledge, and drive to innovate.  A decade ago, Irene worked in a producer’s association doing back office work, putting together the files that allowed the farmers to participate in contracts with end users, a program sponsored by the government to ensure commercialization of crops such as white corn and wheat. This was called “Agricultura por Contrato ASERCA.” She understood the ropes of commercialization and eventually gave it a try and flew solo. It was not easy because she faced the challenge of starting from scratch with just a handful of producers who believed in her talent, besides the fact of being a woman in an environment typically led by men. 

Nonetheless, her capacity and connections paid off and soon more and more people came looking for a different way to market their crops. When Joaquin joined, the company grew faster. Their teamwork made farmers feel listened to and taken care of, with fairness and friendship. They felt at home. 

Today, SAFINSA markets more than 10,000ha worth of food products, serves 350 farmers, and has a storage capacity of 50,000 metric tons of grain. They are the leaders in northern Sinaloa and of El Carrizo Valley.

Now, when BIMBO’s agronomists came seven years ago, the concepts around regenerative agriculture were not odd for the farmers. Sure, some projects with no-tillage had been initiated, and crop rotation was widespread, but putting all these new concepts together, such as carbon sequestration, decreasing water and chemical fertilization consumption? It was no easy feat. 

Nevertheless, Joaquin and Irene listened to the people who came with the agronomists. A program for wheat was developed by CIMMYT, the Center for Research and Improvement of Maize and Wheat, a foundation with more than 50 years of experience worldwide, and worthy of plenty of recognition, which is a subject for another article. Together SAFINSA and CIMMYT started educating farmers, measuring the right parameters in the soil, and promoting these practices all year round. 

As you may already know, farmers tend to be risk averse when it comes to new ideas presented to them by others outside their immediate world, yet they are more prone to change when someone in their own village or town follows the new path. SAFINSA invited farmers to participate and also to witness the benefits of no-tillage and the positive impact of keeping the soil covered with crops year-round, plus many other benefits. Besides organizing events at harvest, they used social media to post the improvements and techniques being used. 

Now, the community has a new outlet to learn about what is being done, and learn who is doing what, which encourages more farmers to join. More recently, BIMBO and SAFINSA organized an event to recognize farmers with the best practices, and prizes were awarded. Here is a post of the event: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1H6BLYNg2N/

Nowadays, SAFINSA is one of the key suppliers in Mexico to Grupo Bimbo’s regenerative agriculture program, with crops such as wheat, corn and sesame seed. Farmers listening to the BEAR. 

To recap, communication is the key all along the food chain. Irene and Joaquin aligned their goals to BIMBO’s. Hence, the farmers who followed a more sustainable method had crops benefited by good yields, less input and water consumption, many tons of carbon sequestered, and producers had certainty to sell their grain. The community celebrates that they matter as farmers and BIMBO recognizes their efforts. Here is a link to a video made by BIMBO where it describes the process: https://www.facebook.com/GrupoBimbo/videos/277531915088184 

More stories such as this should be available for everyone to know, understand, and help the push toward a better way to feed the world.

Always happy to read from you. Please feel free to reach me at paco_salas@yahoo.com