ADB, French firm LDC ink pact for USD 100 mn loan to help small farmers

ADB and French firm LDC have signed a USD 100 million (around Rs 760 crore) loan pact to help smallholder farmers in countries, including India and Pakistan, recover from the economic challenges posed by the pandemic and improve their resilience to climate change impacts.

The loan will support Louis Dreyfus Company BV’s (LDC) operations in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand, and Vietnam by financing coffee, cotton, and rice inventories for over 50,000 smallholder farmers across these countries. This will help secure food supply chains and reliable incomes for smallholder farmers, and help offset the impact of supply chain disruptions due to the pandemic, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in a release on Friday.

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“Smallholder farmers, who are already vulnerable to climate change, are facing increasing difficulties due to the pandemic, resulting in income loss, crop and food wastage, and supply chain disruptions,” said ADB Vice-President for Private Sector Operations and Public Private Partnerships Ashok Lavasa. ADB’s assistance will help ensure reliable offtake to farmers, providing a direct way to preserve their livelihoods and assets, while enabling them to invest in climate-resilient farming practices, he said.

An accompanying technical assistance (TA) grant will deliver capacity building and training activities that will reinforce the benefits of sustainable and climate-resilient agricultural practices for cotton farmers in India and coffee farmers in Indonesia. The TA will support pilot-testing of drip irrigation in cotton fields in India, and use of biochar kilns in Indonesia. ADB said the assistance under the TA is expected to benefit about 4,000 farmers, particularly women farmers.

The TA funding comprises USD 205,000 from ADB’s Technical Assistance Special Fund for COVID Recovery and USD 385,000 from the Strategic Climate Fund, administered by ADB. “As a leading merchant and processor of agricultural goods, LDC is committed to empowering smallholder farmers, whose activities are key to global food security, to use sustainable farming practices for the benefit of current and future generations,” said LDC’s Chief Commercial Officer and Head of Asia Region James Zhou.

With the right tools, knowledge, and support, farmers can lastingly improve their yields and livelihoods while preserving the environment. “We look forward to collaborating with ADB toward this important goal,”Zhou said.