What happens when women farmers know their harvest is sold before they plant?

WIPP is run under C-Fruit Ghana. This is the programme we are implementing in partnership with Swisscontact to build climate-resilient supply chains for pineapples, mangoes and coconuts, with a focus on women and young people. Our partner in WIPP is the Chamber of Women in Agribusiness Ghana ( CHAWA).

The initiative consists of five parts. Participants learn about good agricultural practice, farm management and climate-adapted production. We supply planting material and tools as soon as the land has been cleared. Our team supports and coaches each farm throughout the entire production cycle, focusing on quality, yield and efficiency. When the fruit is ripe, we buy it. This way, every participant knows where her harvest is going and on what terms. Through CHAWA, the women also become part of a wider network of women in agribusiness.

Esther Akosua Kyerewaa, who came third in Ghana’s Most Beautiful 2016 and is the founder of Miss Agriculture Ghana, is one of our partners. She has dedicated her platform entirely to agriculture.

“I’ve learnt a lot, especially about fertilisation. You learn the correct proportions, the amount to apply, and even the timing. The timing of application is also very, very important.”

This is how she summarises how the initiative works: “From clearing the land to the inputs and everything else, HPW provides everything. And they also buy the produce.”

Anyone buying dried pineapple wants each batch to be just like the last. This depends on farms that use the same methods for fertilising, harvesting and handling the fruit. Every WIPP farm operates to the standards applied by our agronomists across our entire supplier network, and each one supplies us. For our customers, this means: more trained producers supplying our factory in Adeiso, and a reliable supply of raw materials that we can plan around.

None of this is starting from scratch. Since 1999, we have been working directly with farmers in West Africa, with GPS-mapped partner farms, our own variety trials and soil health programmes. C-Fruit Ghana and WIPP are the latest building blocks in this work. Most of our own workforce are women, and thanks to WIPP, this now also applies to the farms that supply us.

By the end of the initiative, the participants will be running established pineapple farms in accordance with good agricultural practice, will have acquired a basic understanding of agribusiness, and will be selling directly to a buyer who is already familiar with their produce. For us, this means stronger, long-term supply relationships with farms run by women