**A Message from Chris Langwallner, Founder and CEO of WhatIF Foods.Partnering with us, The Pond Foundation, the soils and farming communities in Northern Ghana**
Poverty, hunger, health, illiteracy, inequality, migration, pollution, species extinctions, and our changing climate are all profoundly interconnected. The way we do things needs to change. At WhatIF Foods, we believe that change needs to start with the way we grow food.
To that end, since late 2017, we have invested millions of dollars to create a value chain for the forgotten BamNut, a small, beautiful and humble West African legume that brings life back to soils and to impoverished smallholder farmer communities. We have created our plant-based milks to replenish our customers’ well-being, to restore degraded lands and to reconnect with the predominantly women, Ghanaian farmers who grow the crop.
In February 2022, in partnership with The Pond Foundation, we commenced our regenerative, 21st-century BamNut value chain project in the Northern Region of Ghana. In less than one year, we’ve partnered with almost 1,000 smallholder farmers living in 25 rural communities who are growing our first-ever BamNut crop on soils that otherwise lie bare, that are devoid of life and are destined to further contribute to climate change. Our BamNut value chain enables soil health, carbon sequestration, and a fair income for farming communities who are otherwise left to the mercy of speculative commodity markets.
We have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars on this project because we believe in it. We will continue to do so and we’re already seeing positive results in the form of trust-based relationships that are growing between our teams and the farmers. We received the greatest compliment we’ve ever been paid recently when farmers from our partner communities said, “No one’s ever worked with us like this before.”
Now, through the [Buy Food, Make An Impact Project](https://whatif-foods.shop/), we want to offer you the opportunity to reconnect with our partner farmers too.
We’re inviting you to come and partner with us, The Pond Foundation, the soils and the farmers in Ghana. By contributing 1% from your shopping cart, you will provide valuable, additional funds to the amounts we already contribute to realise our collective dream of a better food system for all and for the planet. Your contribution is additive to our investment and will be used to upgrade the rudimentary healthcare, water and sanitation infrastructure in our partner communities, and to support our partner farmers’ children in their education so that they stand a fair chance to participate in a modern society.
This is what we mean by reconnecting. Through our products and our relationships with our partner farmers, their soils, The Pond Foundation and you, we can make a difference. We can create a different way.
