NCBA CLUSA’s USAID- funded Sustainable Cooperative Agribusiness Alliance (SCAA) project was featured in a new article for Climatelinks, a global knowledge portal for climate and development practitioners. Indonesia’s islands have had a dramatic increases in population over the last few decades and more recent expansions of unsustainable industrial agriculture have contributed to a loss of over 20 million hectares of forest.
The SCAA project is a USAID Global Development Alliance project in partnership with the National Cooperative Business Association/CLUSA International and CBI Global, a U.S.-based firm that connects spice farmers with buyers from more than 160 companies in 40 countries. Together with local Indonesian spice traders, CBI Global has invested in the infrastructure to process spices grown in Papua and South Sulawesi Provinces. They spent more than $1 million building nursery facilities for seedlings of spice crops and shade trees, processing plants, and buying stations where farmers can bring their harvests to sell and to be processed. NCBA CLUSA expanded the capacity of local farmers and government officials in Papua and South Sulawesi provinces to access better planting materials, sustainably produce and process high-value crops, and connect to international markets.
In a new piece for Climatelinks, writer Christine Chumbler explores how this level of investment into buy-in from both local governments and the private sector, a hallmark of sustainability, was the missing piece to creating sustainable crops and a better way of life for local communities.
Read the full article here: https://www.climatelinks.org/blog/baking-your-way-reforestation
