Diageo India-led Initiative Empowers 100 Smallholder Women Farmers

By: WE Staff | Monday, 5 February 2024

Diageo India (United Spirits Ltd) has launched a micro-enterprise initiative in Nashik, Maharashtra, empowering 100 smallholder women farmers to tackle crop loss, and food waste, and ensure sustainable livelihoods. The program supports Diageo's commitment to sustainable practices from grain to glass. It aims to solve important issues like crop loss and food waste that smallholder female farmers experience. Ensuring these women have sustainable means of livelihood is the ultimate objective.

Diageo India has partnered with Savitribai Phule Ekatma Samaj Mandal (SPMESM) and S4S Technologies to provide training, financial support, and equipment to women farmers, and equipment for sun-drying surplus produce, aiming to reduce food waste and contribute to Sustainable Development Goals 12.3. The program trains women in drying vegetables, supplying produce to hotels, restaurants, and ingredient manufacturers, ensuring consistent supply to the food industry and stable income for women entrepreneurs.

Diageo India's Corporate Relations Director, Jagbir Singh Sidhu, highlights the company's dedication to Pioneering Grain-to-Glass Sustainability as being important to both community empowerment and the Society 2030: Spirit of Progress ESG goals. He mentioned, that the constant dedication to empowering communities while collaborating with businesses and other stakeholders in the agricultural supply chain to develop real, long-lasting solutions is demonstrated by the partnership with SPMESM and S4S technology.

Diageo India has initiated water replenishment projects in 23 villages of Maharashtra, affecting over 59,000 individuals through check dam construction and desilting ponds.