Concept Note: Supporting Gambian

Smallholder Farmers
18.04.2024

Prepared by:

ReSeed P.B.C. The Carbon Regenerative Hubs

Underground

For
Richard Branson & Aaron Berger

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Overview
The purpose of this document is to outline a viable framework for the socio-economic
development of Gambia’s most at-risk and vulnerable female populations, especially those that
have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), while improving Gambian food security,
agricultural productivity, and formal-sector economic participation rates, through a targeted
intervention designed to ensure community engagement, community ownership, and
collaborative, contextualised solutions.

The strongest way to reduce the vulnerability of females in the Gambia is to raise their
value to society. It is envisioned that this project will serve as a scalable model for agricultural
development interventions, across the Sub-Saharan West African region.

Background & Introduction

Gambian smallholder farmers, notably informal sector small-scale farmers are vulnerable to
food insecurity and fall below the poverty line, unable to access basic services such as
healthcare and education for their families. Gambian women are particularly vulnerable, as
they typically lack value within their communities unless FGM is practiced. In order to
overcome this barrier, the proposed intervention seeks to improve the value Gambian women
bring to their communities through increased earned income, independent livelihood
generation, asset ownership, and contribution to the overall economic output of the Gambia.
Rates of participation among youth in the agricultural sector have faced decades of decline,
while agricultural production relative to domestic consumption rates continue to decrease.

In light of this challenging context, there exists a significant opportunity to support Gambian
smallholder farmers, especially victims of FGM and their children, to create alternative
livelihoods and alternative rites of passage, through targeted community interventions.

Outcomes and Objectives

Outcomes:
The proposed pilot project aims to assess what Scope of Work and Level of Effort is necessary in
order to inform the delivery of a comprehensive intervention, including:

● Improve food security and economic productivity for Gambian farmers, particularly
those at risk or affected by FGM and their children
● Create alternative rites of passage
● Strengthen the broader Gambian agricultural sector
● Increase participation in agriculture while maintaining competitive and sustainable
agricultural practices across key-crops.

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The project aims to leverage community engagement, ownership, and scalability through
production, added value processing, and market linkage improvements, in order to expand
across the broader sub-saharan region through the following objectives:

1. Create awareness of and safety from widespread FGM practices across the most at-risk
and vulnerable populations in sub-Saharan West Africa.

2. Leverage existing land contributions and integrated network from surrounding

communities of smallholder farmers to increase crop production, introducing new crop
varieties.

3. Ensure quantity and quality yield improvements for supported smallholder farmers
across the various crop-types and value chains through training and inputs.

4. Increase earned income for supported farmers through regenerative agricultural

practices, ensuring longevity, soil health, and sustainability.

5. Facilitate market linkages encouraging increases in price/mt for crops cultivated and
increased market access to regional and international markets, ensuring added value
processing where possible, and minimising post-harvest losses.

6. Create access to finance initiatives in partnership with local financial institutions to

increase borrowing and purchasing power, while reducing interest rates on agricultural
loans.

Through these efforts, vulnerable and at-risk populations will be supported to self-sufficiency,
formal sector inclusion will increase as informal agricultural activity will become more
productive and profitable. Sustainability will be ensured through a profit-sharing scheme
wherein 15% of production is reinvested back into the local communities for community
projects, while 85% shared between farmers themselves and the program. Furthermore, 50%
of all carbon credit revenues generated would be redistributed back to the smallholder farmer
beneficiaries.

The Consortium
The Consortium has been green lit by the Nigerian National Council on Climate Change, an
officially recognized body by the Paris Climate Accord.

Regenerative Hubs
Regenerative Hubs is working in The Gambia to bring food buyers and food producers
together for greater impact. Regenerative Hubs brings certification, offtaking, marketing and
regenerative expertise to regionalized areas, such as for the Great Green Wall project in Africa.
M and I organics Founded in 2021, is The Gambia’s first commercial organic fertiliser company.
The company produces high quality organic fertilisers and is spearheading the agricultural
transformation in The Gambia by promoting the use of locally sourced organic fertiliser with an
emphasis on soil nutrition.

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Carbon Underground
The Carbon Underground Created in 2013 to create a global shift from harmful Industrial
agricultural practices to Regenerative ones. TCU’s strategy of leveraging the benefits to
business has helped the Regenerative movement become the largest food movement in history
(Whole Foods Market) and generated engagement by most global food companies and in most
countries around the world to transition.

ReSeed
Reseed is a full service carbon solution provider bringing carbon credits directly from
farmers to the market. ReSeed fights climate change at scale by financing and incentivizing
farmers to steward carbon through regenerative farming practices. ReSeed partners with
farmers around the world to fight climate change and reverse poverty by:

● Incentivising the use of regenerative and traditional farming practices

● Making it easy for farmers to participate, at no cost
● Accurately measuring, verifying and creating carbon credits and certifying co-benefits
● Paying farmers quickly and equitably when credits are sold.

For more background on ReSeed please go to this link.

Problem Statement
Structural Challenges: Gambian women lack adequate access to income generating activities
and struggle to feed their families. Socially, most women in Sub-Saharan West Africa face the
threat of FGM, which is typically viewed as a necessary rite of passage for social acceptance,
marriage within communities, and access to a livelihood.

Economically, few Gambians are interested in agriculture, and a lack of awareness of the
potential benefits of agriculture constrains productivity and innovation. There is currently an
exodus of Gambians where daily, hundreds of young people are dying at sea trying to get to
Europe, while those of them who do arrive in Europe have no jobs, extending Gambian
economic constraints to the areas they reach. Additionally, seasonality constraints hinder
agricultural production in West Africa with a prolonged rainy season between June - October
each year.

Fractured Value Chains: Lack of consistency in value chains means that inputs and supplies
for production are strained, post harvest losses can remain high, and production lags
domestic/regional demand. Gambia currently only produces 5% of the required food to meet
domestic demand for consumption, resulting in inadequate food security. For staples such as
Wheat and rice, prices are increasing, in part because of the Ukraine war and global supply
chain constraints. Furthermore, most meat and fish is imported as well. Although cotton, rice,
vegetables, peppers, onions, sugar, and corn (among others) were produced, they are no longer

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(since colonisation ended) and are currently imported. Primary crop production is mainly
limited to peanuts but can carry high rates of Aflatoxins and are therefore only sold in China.

Lack of Downstream Processing Opportunities: While basic processing can be done on-farm,
shelf-life remains an issue constraining access to markets.

Lack of Market Linkages: Currently, farmers are constrained by access to market and are
limited in capacity to find offtakers, facilitate agreements, and maintain relationships.

Lack of Access to Finance: Currently, farmers are constrained by access to finance and are
limited in ability to afford the cost of agricultural finance and participate in income generating
agricultural activities, in both domestic and global markets.

Proposed Solution
The proposed solution will ensure a comprehensive approach to agricultural value-chain
strengthening for women is adhered to, while being designed specifically for the Gambian
context. In order to target an initial 1000-2000 beneficiaries, the project will leverage an initial
contribution 500 hectares of virgin savannah already granted (active signed lease), plus 4000
hectares of virgin savannah allocated over the next 50 years, to gain lessons learned to apply to
a greater, more scaled initiative. All interventions will ensure:

● Community engagement through a participatory approach where government has

already worked with community elders to contribute land
● Community ownership where community land is utilised, and collaborative,
contextualised solutions where those same communities will be farming adjacent land.
● Scalability will be ensured through profitability, increased earned income for farmer
beneficiaries, a sustainable and profitable carbon credit scheme, and an additional 1500
hectares of land adjacent to the nearest riverside, where complementary projects can
be engaged.

1. Stakeholder Engagement
Establishment of formal partnerships, working engagements with government agencies and
donors will be essential in understanding the requirements for data collection, the sources of
those data (primary / secondary), and the utility of information collected. Further work will be
done to engage communities to create awareness of and safety from FGM, for victims and their
children. Women cooperatives will be targeted (where existing) and created where not present,
to act as a point of contact for service delivery including Training and Capacity Building. During
this phase, a preliminary feasibility study will be undertaken to identify potential crop types and
market opportunities, specific to the regions and lands selected.

2. Toolkits, Training and Capacity Building

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Farmer Field School (FFS): FFS Training will commence to enhance quantity and quality of
agricultural production, incorporating best practices from domestic and international sources
and ensuring relevance to regional and international markets.

Horticulture Toolkits: Pre-harvest, Harvest, and Postharvest toolkits will be provided ensuring
smallholder farmers are equipped with all necessary equipment and inputs to ensure
production.

Community Assets: Solar dehydrators, cool-rooms, and basic packaging facilities will be
incorporated on the community level to: a) serve supported farmers and b) serve the broader
community.

3. Data Collection
Field Data (Initial): The scope of field work will be determined by the desired scope of data
collection required in order to fulfil the desired database utility, as agreed upon with all
stakeholders, and in consideration of the availability of existing secondary data sources. It is
suggested that field work would be limited to:
a. Primary data collection for monetisation activities
b. Events hosted to map farmer polygons (on the community/regional level)
c. Incorporation of secondary data sources

Field Data (Ongoing): The project will also include ongoing data collection to ensure progress
toward objectives and outcomes are tracked with relevant KPIs and Metrics which will include
various forms of beneficiary data (farmer, production, market, labour, socio-economic,
demographic, etc.).

Remote Sensing (Ongoing): ReSeed’s remote sensing technology developed in partnership

with Google AI will continue collecting data remotely throughout the project duration to assist
in validation and verification of carbon sequestration.

4. Monetisation & Sustainability

Defining Sustainability Strategies: The monetisation strategy will be created and
implemented, in partnership with ReSeed, to collect baseline data on the smallholder farmers,
map farmer polygons, and develop carbon credits. Carbon credits would be sold either on
mandatory markets through Gambian ITMOs or through Voluntary Markets as ReSeed deems
reasonable. We will leverage revenues to increase earned income for farmers and lift
beneficiaries out of poverty improving their livelihood vulnerability.

Ensuring Sustainability through Market Linkages: In order to mitigate post-harvest losses,

farmers will be assisted to form market linkages with offtakers and processors to ensure
maximum crop utilisation. Domestic markets will be targeted to ensure increased food security
and international markets targeted to ensure highest increases in earned income and
price/yield for target beneficiaries.

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5. Access to Finance
Creating a path toward scalability: The access to finance strategy will be created and
implemented, in partnership with local financial institutions, to lower the cost of agricultural
finance through an opt-in programme where farmers may elect to contribute their
cash-earnings from the carbon credit scheme, to partnering financial institutions . These
contributions will offset the interest rates of finance granted to those farmers, while the
consortium will assist to de-risk the lending process through the capacity-building, training, and
broader support given to beneficiaries (to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in crop
production and offtaking/market linkages).

Milestones

I. Community Engagement
Through community consultative meetings, we will engage local leaders and smallholder
farmer beneficiaries will be identified and selected, according to selection criteria to be
determined with relevant stakeholders. Cooperatives and stakeholders will be mapped
and engaged through collaborative dialogue and identification of the most vulnerable
beneficiaries to be selected.

II. First Cohort of Farmers Supported

Through on-farm activities, the first cohort of training and capacity building through the
FFS will commence. Focused upon best practices for quantity and quality improvements
for smallholder farmer beneficiaries, with specific course material on target crops, and
the tools to improve yields and earned income per household, the intervention will be
tailored to the specific crop-types identified during the feasibility stage.

III. First Carbon Credits Generated

Through robust data collection and baseline assessments, the first cohorts of supported
farmers will benefit from the revenues generated from ReSeed’s carbon credits sold.
Each farmer will have individual earnings tied to their individual performance,
supported by ReSeed’s smallholder farmer protocol and blockchain-based reporting
database, to ensure transparency and auditability.

IV. First Offtake Agreements Signed

Market linkages with downstream processors, packagers, and off-takers to wholesale
and retail markets will be facilitated ensuring increases in price/mt, improving

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 smallholder farmer household income above the national average for Gambian Pigeon
Pea farmers.

V. Project Improvements, Expansion, & Scale

Lessons learned through the initial phases of feasibility will be applied to subsequent
additional expansion of programmatics. Through revenues generated from on-farm
activities and the sale of carbon credits, in cooperation with stakeholders, a model for
expansion will be developed for the Sahel and Sub-Saharan West Africa (the great green
wall area). This expansion will ensure to maximise the number of supported
beneficiaries, mitigating incidence, risk, and effects of FGM, and ensuring quantity and
quality improvements for identified crop species, as well as partnering with financial
institutions to lower the cost of agricultural finance, further encouraging domestically
grown produce to reach global markets.

Conclusion

I. Conclusion
The pilot project would require seed funding of $450,000. This will cover the initial
phases of feasibility to inform the full project design to ensue. The funds would
have the following proposed breakdown:

Agricultural Land and Carbon Feasibility Assessment $250,000

Study, Community Outreach & Engagement

Baseline Data Collection, Legal Framework, Modeling, $200,000

Quantification, Analysis for Initial Carbon Credit
Generation

Total $450,000

*Next phases will be determined based upon the results of the pilot.