Partners step up agri-entrepreneurship

Syngenta Foundation India and Tata Trusts have incorporated the Agri Entrepreneur Growth Foundation (AEGF) as an independent not-for-profit organization. 

The Syngenta Foundation has been working on the development of Agri-Entrepreneurs (AE), where an unemployed rural youth is identified, trained and mentored to help small farmers. To create a transformational impact at scale, AEGF was created in partnership with Tata Trusts. The Vision of this project is to “foster agriculture development through Agri-entrepreneurs” and the Mission is to “launch 100000 AEs and directly engage 20 million smallholder farmers by 2023” in India.

Earlier this year, AEG Foundation conducted a multi-stakeholder consultation event called the ‘Agri Enterprise Ecosystem Conclave’. The aim of the conclave was to co-ideate and co-create the path for scaling up the AE Model across India. Over 70 representatives participated from 48 Agri-sector organizations; spanning across the public sector, private players, international agencies, domestic NGOs, policy and advisory. Participants were divided into 7 inter-sectoral groups.

The objective was to get a user/partner perspective on the existing model, the envisioned project design and a deep dive on some of the key aspects of the model as it is today for Credit, Input Access, Market Linkage and Training. Participants engaged in a lively day-long discussion in different sessions. 

This marks the beginning of a great journey toward achieving our common goal. In the coming year, AEFG will continue to build strong partnerships with Government and Non-Government actors along with Network Managers.

A new partnership with StarAgri as a network manager has been initiated in Rajasthan State for working on the mustard value chain. In the coming months the focus will also be to take the total number of AEs to 5000 thus reaching close to one million farmers.