Accelerating sustainable agriculture

Sustainable agricultural growth in Tanzania

Unilever representatives including CEO Paul Polman attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2011, where a global partnership to accelerate sustainable agricultural growth was announced.

Unilever has joined with 16 companies – among them Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and Kraft Foods – to support the New Vision for Agriculture. The partnership, backed by a coalition of businesses, governments and farmers, seeks to improve food security, environmental sustainability and economic opportunity around the world.

The strategy’s aims echo those of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan in many ways. Its targets include decreasing greenhouse gas emissions per tonne by 20%, reducing rural poverty by 20% each decade and increasing production by 20%.

“Business can help transform agriculture, but we can’t do it alone,” said Paul at a press conference to mark the launch of the New Vision for Agriculture. “By working collaboratively with farmers, governments and others, we can achieve our common goals of increasing health and prosperity while protecting the planet.”

Responsible growth in Tanzania

In Tanzania, Unilever has co-chaired a public–private partnership initiative with the Tanzanian Government which clearly reflects the aims of the new vision. Paul Polman helped to launch a ‘blueprint’ for the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) programme at Davos with the aim of transforming the area’s agricultural productivity.

Funded by investment from Unilever and a range of global businesses, government agencies, farmers, foundations and other donors (USAID), SAGCOT’s targets are to generate annual farming revenues of $1.2 billion, while lifting more than 2 million local people permanently out of poverty.

As part of the programme, 350,000 hectares of land between Tanzania’s port of Dar es Salaam through Malawi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo are set to become some of Africa’s richest farmland. Tens of thousands of smallholder farmers along the corridor will have the chance to become commercial farmers with access to modern irrigation facilities, assuring local food security and creating at least 420,000 new employment opportunities in the agricultural value chain.

This ‘blueprint’ model has also been extended to Vietnam where, working in collaboration with the Vietnamese government, Unilever is partnering to develop sustainable tea production.