Nunya Farms featured in Columbia Business School Magazine

In April 2017, Nunya Farms was picked up by Columbia Business School's Alumni Magazine in the article "Will there be enough food?".

The article highlights Nunya Farms activities from the standpoint of commercial agribusiness, through which we aim to meet the massive demand for food on the African continent.

Below is an excerpt from the article:

Growing Better Agribusiness in Emerging Markets

"Even without regulatory pressure, there are still tremendous opportunities for agribusiness to update outmoded production methods, and there is perhaps no greater opportunity for doing so than in Africa.

Feeding the world in the next 30 years will require vast expansion and investment in African agriculture. According to the UN, the continent has the fastest population growth rate — twice as fast as that of the world overall. The population is expected to double by 2050. Over half the remaining arable land in the world is there, yet the continent still imports $25 billion in food per year. African agriculture still largely comprises small growers and subsistence farmers producing on a scale not nearly sufficient to meet future demand.

Ken Kanyagui ’16 and Yasuharu Matsuno ’17 hope to change that. Their company, Nunya Farms, based in Ghana, combines sustainability with modest conventional technologies that are relatively easy to implement. The company will be planting at least 10,000 acres in Ghana (about 0.1 percent of the country’s arable land) with peanuts and soy this year at two sites. They hope to expand dramatically both within and beyond Ghana’s borders, adding other staple crops like maize, sorghum, and chili peppers."

Kanyagui and Matsuno see massive growth potential in the region, because what Nunya Farms is doing is relatively simple — maintaining the land’s natural fertility through sustainable practices like crop rotation and use of conventional equipment still uncommon in many African countries, including no-till mechanical planters. In addition, Nunya Farms emphasizes community-development needs, vetting land deals to avoid forced evictions and closely monitoring work conditions.

“Most people don’t see big agribusiness as sustainable agriculture. They see bad guys trying to take advantage of everyone,” says Kanyagui. “But this is actually the mindset we need in a place like Ghana and most of Africa: big agribusiness that’s viable, responsible, investing in the people and the community, bringing sustainable jobs, and most importantly, increasing food production on the continent.”

Ideas and Insights - "Will there be enough food?" (http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia-business/will-there-be-enough-food)