Dear SunCulture Supporters,
Usually, I write this letter in late April or early May. This year I waited to see how the world’s biggest superpower would fall on the issue of climate change. The decision has been made and now, more than ever, we need to step up to protect the future of our planet.
Around the world, 500 million smallholder farmers provide us with most of the food that we eat every day. This year, we witnessed firsthand the impact that climate change can have on these farmers — in East Africa, a devastating drought crippled agricultural livelihoods and placed 20 million people at risk of starvation.
At SunCulture, our mission is twofold — to run a successful and profitable business, and to put more money in farmers’ pockets in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. Skeptics and naysayers claim that it’s impossible to make money, help people, and protect the environment at the same time, but since Day 1 at SunCulture, we’ve viewed these goals as complementary, not mutually exclusive.
So how does a company make money and do good in the world? We listen to our customers. The best thing that Charlie and I did in the early days of SunCulture was realize that it’s our job to listen to what our customers need and come up with solutions with them and for them.
Our vision to transform the way food is grown, to make it cheaper and easier for farmers to grow food, can only be achieved by working with the people we want to affect, which are our customers. From Day 1, farmers taught us that their challenges are systemic and complicated, rooted in centuries of traditions, and that a solution for them needs to combine access to tools, know-how, and capital. So that’s the solution we developed.
SunCulture’s current farmers will (annually):