News & Insights

Meet Rikolto's #YouthinAg experts: some of them are young in age, others young of mind, and all of them with a passion to invest in the untapped potential of young farmers and entrepreneurs.

Young entrepreneurship is giving hope to the future of Vietnamese agriculture. Nghia's success is no accident but a story of passion and persistence. Discover his journey!

Karina Lopez grew up as the daughter of coffee farmers in Ibarra, Ecuador. Like many young people in her region, she didn't see much future in agriculture or the product her family grows. Meet her story and how she´s making the world a better place with coffee.

Bartolomé and other young indigenous Panamanians from the region Ngäbe-Buglé have taken up cocoa cultivation with their families using agroforestry systems (SAF) to protect the environment in their community in the face of increasing extensive cattle ranching. Read more about their story.

In this episode of the Rikolto podcast, Thibault, Victor, Hilda, and Chris join us from Leuven (Belgium) and Arusha (Tanzania) and tell us all about how young entrepreneurs are changing food systems.

To make the road from farm to fork shorter, East Africa Fruits eliminates middlemen. The company is currently working with around 5000 farmers to deliver produce to the markets in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's biggest city.

In collaboration with the Women’s Initiative for Start-ups and Entrepreneurship (WISE) in Vietnam, Rikolto assembled more than 100 stakeholders from the food supply chain in Hanoi to exchange opportunities and challenges and address solutions towards building sustainable urban food systems. Discover more here!

Tenacity and resilience are words that describe Yamileth Torrez. At the age of 27, she is a survivor of Covid-19, the shocks of two hurricanes and losses to her income from cocoa production due to the effects of climate variability.

Four years ago, captivated by the flavours of cocoa and chocolate, members of the Youth Committee of the Peruvian farmer organisation Pangoa wanted to specialise in those areas. Today they can be recognised as tasters of cocoa paste and liquor. What impact did the certification have on the young people's professional lives, and what "quality" footprint does the new professionals leave in cooperatives like Pangoa? Find out more in this article.

On Wednesday, June 16th, 40 young people from all over the world met to talk about The True Cost Of Food during the dialogue organised by FoodUnfolded and Rikolto. Aäron De Fruyt, a former colleague, participated and shared his impressions in this blog.

This assignment concerns the provision of Assessment tools to assess agribusinesses and the training of Rikolto staff in the use of the tools as certified assessors.

Lith Montés has been with Rikolto for 4 years as national coordinator of coffee projects in Peru. She often reminds us "I work so that young people have opportunities that I fortunately had".

Young people are full of compelling and promising ideas to change the recipe of our food systems. This is the reason why for this #AfricanCITYFOODmonth campaign, Rikolto has decided to put young changemakers in the spotlight.

Vietnamese people only consume between 66 and 77% of the recommended daily intake of fruits and vegetables. Read more about how Rikolto adresses this by working with vendors and consumers to identify innovations that aim at boosting the intake of fruits and vegetables.

The complete renovation of a gastronomic district in Peru is getting people talking. Its aim is to offer more than just delicious and diverse plates, but also a space for dialogue around sustainable and inclusive food policies at local level and in cities.

We are looking for a finance manager, responsible for ensuring that Rikolto‘s financial system and its implementation is top of sector. Applications welcome until 27 June.

Rikolto is part of a multidisciplinary consortium recently awarded $3.8 million to launch the project “People-centered Food Systems: Fostering Human Rights-based Approaches”. A multidisciplinary project consortium led by Dr. Jessica Fanzo, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food & Agricultural Policy and Ethics at Johns Hopkins University, has received a $3.8 million grant to apply a human rights-based approach to food systems.

On this world food safety day, get to know more about this collective effort in Nicaragua, which has united actors who do not generally work together in the country to conserve a lake. A big endeavour by itself, but one that might also improve the safety of the production of the country's main vegetables for consumption.

In 2009, secondary schools in Lira partnered up with Rikolto and YOUCA to empower Ugandan youth to become active in agriculture. Now more than a decade later, we revisited the schools in Lira to learn from our previous experience and integrate learnings in our future programmes. Tag along with Rikolto colleague Hannes and read his story about his journey to the schools in Lira.

60 young women and men joined us to hack the challenge of how to feed the greater Ouaga area, debating and defining opportunities and challenges for young food entrepreneurs, from 20 to 21 May. Read more about their journey.

Rikolto and FoodUnfolded, a platform powered by EIT Food are organising the dialogue: The true cost of food - Access to Healthy & Sustainable Diets for Everyone, as part of the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, on Wednesday 16 June.

In October 2020, we embarked on a project with Badami Foundation, Parahyangan University, and Ketapang Kita to develop innovative solutions to improve access to affordable food and address the growing issue of food waste in Bandung.

The Mitiiri cooperative is an organisation led by a team of young, dynamic agricultural producers committed to professionalising their organisation, so that it can position itself as a reliable business partner with a good reputation in the Centre-East region of Burkina Faso.

In its climate plan, the city of Antwerp states the ambition to make the local food system more sustainable. To achieve this, the city has started to develop a food strategy, encompassing the whole food chain. The process will identify strategic priorities to build a more inclusive, innovative and circular urban food system.

Twenty thousand producers in the region will benefit from the Multistakeholder Coffee Platform in Cajamarca, an initiative that currently brings together public and private actors in the value chain in the region. Since 2020, Rikolto together with the Coffee Technical Commission in Cajamarca and the Northern Technical Network promote this space that contributes to the National Coffee Action Plan and strengthens the national leadership of the region. Our colleague Lith Montés tells us more about this trip.

In Pedro Moncayo, a town located 60 kilometres north of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, Rikolto identified a group of farmers willing to modernise their business to increase their incomes, not only respecting the limits of nature but also honouring them.

Leuven recently launched the EcoFoodMap: an interactive tool that maps the food system in and around Leuven. The tool provides the necessary information about all initiatives, actors, experts and indicators in the Leuven food system.

For businesses all around the world, the push to be carbon-neutral continues to be a huge priority. The coffee sector is no exception. Climate change threatens the amount of land suitable for coffee farming around the world, making production more difficult and more expensive.

This farm, whose name reflects what its owner Juan Pablo Ruiz initially saw in it, has grown from 9.6 hectares of pastureland to a national reference farm with three organic certification seals for coffee and cocoa, agroforestry systems, orchards, pruning management, windbreaks, water management and a barrier against chemicals.

UNERIZ's mission is to defend and safeguard the interests of women rice parboilers in Burkina Faso. The organisation supports its members in accessing paddy and credit. The umbrella organization of women parboilers' cooperatives strengthens the technical and management capacities of its members; it facilitates their access to storage equipment and infrastructure and supports them in marketing parboiled rice.