FIGHTING POVERTY CAUSED BY COVID-19

1. Because of poverty most farmers in Africa remain poor because they sale their produces during harvest when crop prices are too low on the market

2. - Building of maize storage facility

    - Buying Post-harvest protection products, including
       Purdue Improved Crop Storage ( PICS ) triple-layered 
       hermetic storage bags and chemicals like Actellic           Super.

    - Giving out Post-harvest Loans to farmers         

2. A combination of the two interventions can reduce post harvest loss and help farmers earn:

- Post-harvest loans provide farmers with short-term cash to cover daily expenses. The financial flexibility allows farmers to delay crop sales until market prices recover. This can help farmers increase their annual net revenue by 30%.

- Post-harvest protection products store harvest safely. Safe storage reduces the risk of spoilage and may reduce 15-22% returns to farmers, and can minimize loss on grain stored for future household consumption.

Most of our small scale farmers living in rural areas are the most people living in abject poverty despite them being the ones contributing to the food basket of our country to feed the nation. This is because our small scale farmers are bound to sale their produces immediately during or after harvest.They have to pay school fees for their children, buy their essential commodities for their day to day livelihood for them to survive. This makes them not benefit enough from their harvest because at this time prices for their produces are too low on the market.

We want to prevent the farmers from selling their produces immediately when crop prices are low so that they can come and sale them when crop prices are high on the market.

These poor farmers can be able to up-lift their livelihoods if we can come to their aid. We need to put in place a permanent solution which will help them store their produces until crop prices are high on the market.

As a Co-operative, we want to:

* apply for financial capital that will allow us to build a crop storage for   
farmers. Each farmer who has brought his or her produces for storage will be not charged for storage, but will be entitled to apply for a soft loan from our Co-operative to be paid back when crop prices are high on the market. 

Our solution once implemented will serve rural farmers in our province, and upon its expansion, including other people who are not farmers. it will serve even people in other nine provinces of our country.

This solution will impact the lives of poor small scale farmers in the following ways:

- Farmers will be able to gain more money than they used to, because their income will be up-lifted to almost 29 to 30%.

- They will be able to store their crops for livelihood consumption up to the next planting season without any wasted part of it. This will allow hunger and poverty be the thing of the past.

The business project through its process of being implemented shall offer permanently the following socioeconomic benefits:

• The project will initially create  35 formal jobs and the number of employees will assuredly increase as the business grows. Technical positions shall be filled with Zambian experts personnel.
• The Project will enrich the Zambian Co-operative members/shareholders with the net profit so far realized which shall be at the financial year of the Co-operative Society disbursed to the shareholders as individuals which shall further  invest in more other developmental projects in Zambia for better economic development aimed to contribute to the improved Zambian economic landscape.
• The business in the view of business value chain will effectively empower more than 10,000 small scale farmers in Zambia with ready-made Market for their produces as this will definitely challenge them to expand the production levels to produce more agricultural produces to meet the demand from the processing lines of the business project. For this reason, the small scale farmers as well will employ other  formal workers.

This solution will be dealing with poverty reduction or eradication. The solution we have designed the the best among others because it empowers the local farmers both financially and technically so that they become sustainable for their livelihood income generating.

We selected this option because the project has not yet been funded. The business plan has already been developed and it has 99% of success once implemented.