Our Regen 21 initiative supports our members to develop regenerative supply chains around the globe.
Our first Regen 21 project is in partnership with our member WhatIF Foods in Ghana, where we’re building a regenerative agricultural supply chain with partner organizations and farmers to supply WhatIF with Bambara groundnuts.
We can support your organization to develop:
- Regenerative agriculture programs
- Fully regenerative supply chain management solutions
- Responsible sourcing systems
We are pioneering our Regen21 initiative in the Northern Region of Ghana, where we are collaborating with WhatIF Foods (WIF) to build a regenerative, 21st-century supply chain for the Bambara Groundnut
In Northern Ghana, Pond Foundation and WhatIF Foods have partnered with Kasima Ltd, and local farmers, and their lands to build a regenerative, 21st-century supply chain for Bambara groundnut.
Bambara is a legume and an under-utilised local crop that has a myriad of benefits, including nitrogen-fixing properties, a great nutritional profile (high protein, high fibre), the ability to bring life back to degraded soils, and the promotion of agro-biodiversity and biodiversity. Until now, there’s never been an export market for Bambara, so it is slowly becoming locally extinct as farmers prioritise growing other crops for international markets. It has a very short vegetative growth cycle, copes with poor, degraded soils and low and intermittent rainfall, and is not reliant on capital-intensive inputs, including harmful fertilisers and pesticides.
This makes Bambara a great, climate-resilient alternative to traditional crops that can augment farmer income. And…it’s predominantly grown by women. WhatIF has pioneered the use of Bambara in a variety of terrific foods like its ‘BamNut’ milk and noodles, providing an exciting impetus to get Bambara back into the agricultural landscape, and bringing life back to soils and communities. We’re working in the field in Ghana with our fantastic local partner company and farmers to build the supply of regenerative Bambara for WhatIF’s products.
Aside from the beans, the Bambara shells make the perfect feedstock for biochar. We’re introducing a biochar carbon farming approach that will lock large amounts of carbon dioxide in the soils of our partner farmers. Biochar is a great soil amendment, too, and we expect this inexpensive, regenerative, circular economy approach will help improve farmers’ yields and the overall health of their soils. WIF’s goal is to remove all its lifetime carbon emissions from the atmosphere by insetting them into its own supply chain while creating impactful, positive social and environmental impacts.
Want to build a regenerative supply chain too?
