[Press Release] East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation Releases 5-Year Strategy Visualized by New, Interactive Website

Non-profit corporate foundation East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation (EWS-KT) has launched a new website that showcases its 5-year strategy and allows partners and donors to see the impact their contribution has on the lives of farmers and the communities they support.

East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation (EWS-KT) has launched a new website that showcases its unique strategy and allows partners and donors to see the impact their contribution has on the lives of farmers and the communities they support.

EWS-KT is a non-profit corporate foundation that leverages a business-minded approach to sustainable development for farmers and markets in less-developed areas, through offering practical field demonstrations on home and market-driven production, guiding farmers to establish demonstration plots to showcase innovative techniques for growing vegetables, providing field-level training and exposure on best practices for profitable and sustainable farming, developing locally adapted extension materials and sharing information through digital media platforms.

Moreover, EWS-KT equips smallholder vegetable farmers with the verified information they need to get bigger, healthier harvests. It has unique ties to East-West Seed, a world-leading vegetable seed company that focuses on serving smallholder farmers.

“We are now able to better showcase how training farmers has a real impact on reducing poverty, ending hunger and malnutrition, and providing livelihoods for millions of people in developing countries.”

– EWS-KT Executive Director Stuart Morris

“We are extremely excited about our 5-year strategy and new website,” said EWS-KT Executive Director Stuart Morris. “We are now able to better showcase how training farmers has a real impact on reducing poverty, ending hunger and malnutrition, and providing livelihoods for millions of people in developing countries.”

EWS-KT aims to directly reach 1 million farmers through training projects globally by 2025, with millions more supported through social media, mobile applications, radio programs and printed learning materials.

Since 2015, EWS-KT has trained more than 475,000 farmers across nine countries in Asia and Africa, and it continues the drive to impact the livelihoods of 1 million smallholder farmers, which will eventually improve the nutrition of 50 million lower-income consumers in less-developed areas.

The foundation also focuses on gender equality and youth empowerment in agriculture in order to make our global food systems more inclusive and sustainable.

Inclusive food systems are again in the spotlight as the world is not on track to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets for hunger and nutrition by 2030, according to the UN.

“A lack of nutritional security is a looming humanitarian crisis,” said Morris.

“We know that we all need greater access to food and, more importantly, nutritious food, but it isn’t happening at the scale required globally yet,” Morris said. “The solution is simple but often overlooked. We need to empower smallholder farmers around the world to grow more, and safer-to-eat, vegetables to end malnutrition.”

According to Morris, the relaunch of the EWS-KT website will help partners, donors, governments and academic institutions see the impact that farmer training can have on nutrition and poverty targets in the SDGs.

“Proving that vegetable farming is a viable and profitable business is an incredible opportunity to contribute towards fighting hidden hunger, malnutrition and provide livelihoods for millions,” Morris added. “But we need to collaborate with like-minded organizations to make it a reality.”

About East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation

East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer Foundation (EWS-KT) is a non-profit foundation committed to ensuring nutritional security where it is most needed, especially in lower-income communities.

The foundation promotes private-public sector partnerships and equips smallholder vegetable farmers with the verified information they need to get bigger, healthier harvests.