Practice Areas
Food Analytics
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For more than 20 years, Fintrac has provided the market intelligence and enabling environment analysis needed by private and public sector clients to inform investment and policy decisions that maximize product sales, farmer incomes, industry growth, and food security. Our in-house team of market analysts collect, synthesize, and interpret market information that help agribusinesses make informed decisions. Our customizable suite of analytical tools and implementation support services identify, diagnose, and reform constraints to the agribusiness enabling environment. Fintrac's analyses have helped government agencies improve pesticide registries, inform Feed the Future investments, optimize food aid programming, and streamline monetization efforts.
Value Chain Analysis and Good Agricultural Practices
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Fintrac takes the popular business model of value chain analysis a step further by identifying good agricultural practices to help smallholder farmers increase their incomes. Fintrac's technical approach starts with analyzing the farm-to-market value chain, allowing us to identify areas of deficiency and to craft market-led, client-driven technical interventions focused on strengthening the weak links in the chain. In addition to strengthening value chains, Fintrac works with farmers to introduce good agricultural practices and basic technologies including drip irrigation, integrated pest management and low-cost greenhouses. These good agricultural practices help farmers increase both the quantity and quality of their crops, while the value chain approach helps improve access to markets. Together, these tools help farmers drastically improve their incomes and transform their lives.
Market Development
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Creating sustainable market linkages requires focusing on all points in the value chain, from farm- to-fork.
Fintrac has a market orientation to our technical approach that empowers farmers, exporters, and allied enterprises to make informed choices before a single seed is sown. Knowledge of market specifications, anticipated prices, and delivery mechanisms is critical to maximize product sales and incomes, whether produced for household use with surplus destined for supermarkets and wholesalers, or sold for international export.
Fintrac has an in-house team of market analysts, a global buyers’ network, and field programs that always include market logistics specialists. We work as closely with informal domestic traders as we do with multinational importers, and believe that market diversification is an important element of sustainability in a dynamic industry that is continually adapting to climatic, consumer, and other changes.
[back to the top]Production
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Fintrac introduces good agricultural practices (GAPs) and basic technologies inclusive of raised beds, mulching, plant nutrition, drip irrigation, integrated pest management, crop rotation and inter-cropping to increase yields. We promote crop diversification, and are always mindful to create a balance between nutritious home consumption, and income-generation. Many of our client-beneficiaries are able to grow food and cash crops on less than 1,000 square meters of land, but no matter what their size, we encourage all producers to treat their farms as businesses. Fintrac technicians are highly trained, and equally adept at conventional and organic open-field farming, as kitchen gardening, and greenhouse production. Our client farmers typically double, triple and quadruple yields as a result of adopting our integrated crop management approach, and we have a proven track record transferring these extension skills to NGOs and other business service providers via specialty boot camps,technical apprenticeships, and cooperative alliances.
Value-Addition
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Fintrac specializes in postharvest handling and processing. From on-farm grading and sorting, and sophisticated packhouse construction and operation, to the introduction of storage options and warehouse receipts program, Fintrac-facilitated postharvest improvements reduce crop losses and expand product shelf-life. Similarly, the development of processing opportunities and competitive processing industries expands employment and supply opportunities, particularly for women and youth; expands returns at source; and offers an alternative to highly perishable items in terms of distant markets. Fintrac has contributed to entire new processing industries, such as IQF fruits and vegetables, in addition to substantially expanding existing ones, such as the processing of ABE chillies into mace products. In Kenya for example, five hundred smallholder families are the beneficiaries of an agribusiness alliance between Earthoil Kenya (a global supplier of plant extracts), Fintrac, and USAID, wherein farmers are growing tea trees. The trees, which have a lifespan of twenty-five years, can be harvested every eight to ten months, and the Body Shop is contracted to purchase the majority of oil extracted. The farmers are also intercropping with maize, beans, and other vegetables.
Environment
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Conservation of soil and water, increase of carbon fixation, and implementation of climate change adaptation measures figure prominently in our environmental stewardship activities, because sustainable land use is essential to long-term profitability, social equity, and real food security. We typically expand acreage under IPM practices, introduce safe use of agrochemicals, and increase use of biological and organic pest & disease controls, live barriers, and covered production. We expand acreage under better soil conservation practices, introduce raised and contoured beds, low and no tillage, trellising, row covers and mulching. We widely promote water conservation, and protect water sources from contamination, through the introduction of drip irrigation and the establishment of farm chemical safety programs. Our technicians also incorporate environmental and food safety activities into off-farm programs in packhouses and processing plants for horticulture and dairy for example through implementation of HACCP, GAPs, GMPs and other programs which adhere to the strict requirements imposed by final buyers/markets.
[back to the top]Gender
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Fintrac sets rigorous targets for the participation of women and youth in our projects, because they are critical innovators and drivers for agricultural productivity when they can access credit, training, markets, and resources for production. We track clients by gender, build leadership among women and youth in participating producer groups, encourage participation of women-owned farms and enterprises, design and deliver gender-sensitive training, and introduce crops and other products tailored to the strengths and constraints of each productive member of the household.
Health & Nutrition
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We believe that the health and well-being of rural families depends on balanced and adequate diets, and that integrating sanitation, hygiene and nutrition considerations into the agricultural value chain improves standards of living on multiple levels. We have developed tools that allow us to analyze the highest levels of malnutrition within countries, and determine the supplemental food required to achieve minimal caloric intake for pregnant and lactating women, and children under two, within those target populations. We design kitchen gardens for vulnerable populations to meet nutrition needs and generate income from surplus, and are continually evolving innovative production techniques to increase per-square-meter yields of root crops, vegetables, fruits, and grains. And we have been integrating HIV/AIDS and malaria prevention and treatment education into our multi-year agricultural development projects for fifteen years, most recently working with local partners in Ethiopia through PEPFAR funding to introduce new HIV/AIDS policies on commercial farms, that have reached 30,000 young adult farm employees.
Disaster Rehabilitation
Fintrac's model for rapid recovery from disasters sets the standard for reviving and strengthening agribusinesses in rural areas devastated by hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and conflict. In Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean, our teams have introduced new techniques and technologies through donor-funded programs that have not only restored but also increased farmers� productivity and incomes from pre-disaster and pre-conflict levels in very short turn-around, while simultaneously mitigating vulnerabilities to future climatic changes. Tools include utilizing private and public sector partners as conduits for distributing seeds, inputs and related mini-grants to jumpstart production; crop diversification and calendarization; rebuilding improved infrastructure; and targeting marginalized populations.
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