CNFA and GSI Partner to Provide Solutions to Improve Farm Productivity and Food Security in Africa

WASHINGTON. - Wednesday, April 8th 2015 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE) CNFA and GSI Group have launched a strategic partnership aimed at promoting food storage and protein production systems as a critical way to improve farm productivity and food security. This partnership will notably strive to significantly reduce the multi-billion dollar food losses that occur yearly due to insufficient and inadequate post-harvest infrastructures in Sub-Sahara Africa. It will also leverage CNFA’s close proximity to thousands of smallholder farmers in Africa with GSI’s cutting-edge, scalable technologies for grain and perishable storage.

GSI, a global brand of AGCO, is a world class manufacturer of grain storage, material handling, conditioning and drying equipment, as well as a full line supplier of swine and poultry production equipment. GSI Group, LLC President Tom Welke and CNFA President and CEO Sylvain Roy released the following statement:

“This partnership has the potential to dramatically improve smallholder farmers’ incomes and nutritional status by reducing their post-harvest losses. An alliance between CNFA - a premier agricultural non-profit development organization - and GSI - a world-class agribusiness company - demonstrates how working together and merging our collective years of experience, can result in new and innovative approaches to address food losses. We believe that our partnership can significantly impact millions of rural households’ food security and help strengthen the local economy.”

CNFA and GSI are currently developing solutions and technologies to be introduced in the near future. Among the most promising innovations will be the introduction of a village-level, solar-powered cold storage for perishables that will allow smallholder farmers to reduce waste and losses, while improving their access to new and existing markets.

About CNFA: Cultivating New Frontiers in Agriculture, an international development organization, specializes in designing sustainable, market-led agricultural initiatives. CNFA builds strong local and global partnerships, incorporates innovative approaches in its programs, and fosters inclusive development to offer enhanced opportunities to under-served groups. Since 1985, CNFA has managed more than $510 million in donor-funded agriculture development programs and has worked in 42 countries across the world in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia. For more information, visit www.cnfa.org.

About AGCO: AGCO (NYSE: AGCO) is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of agricultural machinery. AGCO supports more productive farming through a full line of tractors, combines, hay tools, sprayers, forage equipment, grain storage and protein production systems, seeding and tillage implements and replacement parts. AGCO products are sold through five core machinery brands, Challenger®, Fendt®, GSI®, Massey Ferguson® and Valtra® and are distributed globally through a combination of approximately 3,100 independent dealers and distributors in more than 140 countries. Founded in 1990, AGCO is headquartered in Duluth, GA, USA. In 2014, AGCO had net sales of $9.7 billion. For more information, visit www.AGCOcorp.com and www.gsiag.com

Contacts

CNFA

Jessie Lowry, 202-296-3920

Director of Communications

jlowry@cnfa.org



AGCO

Rebecca Fabian, 646-415-8518

Senior Consultant Instinctif Partners

Rebecca.Fabian@instinctif.com







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