BCTA MEMBERSHIP STATUS
Alumni

SECTOR
Agriculture, Food & Beverage

HEADQUARTERS
Indonesia

REGION OF INITIATIVE
Asia & Pacific

SDG CONTRIBUTION

East Bali Cashews (EBC), bringing jobs and community empowerment to a severely impoverished community in Eastern Indonesia, joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to increase cashew yields by 500 percent across the region by 2030. The company also commits to generate a commensurate five-fold increase in income for 15,000 farming families by providing advanced planting materials, improved farming practices and linkages to markets, and creating 1,000 new jobs.

Indonesia’s cashew-growing regions are among the country’s poorest areas. Since cashew trees thrive in places where other plants perish, smallholder farmers critically depend on the income that cashews provide. However at 150-300 kg per hectare, yields in Indonesia only reach one tenth of the average production of major producers like Vietnam and India. Low yields are the result of planting low-yielding varieties and a lack of knowledge about good farming practices. With the right clonal varieties and best-practice farm management, EBC believes it can raise production by 500 percent over the next 15 years. And since cashews are a cash crop, a five-time yield improvement will be proportionate to a fivefold increase in farmers’ incomes.

EBC’s factory is located in the village of Ban in the Karangasem District of northeast Bali, Indonesia –an agricultural community that suffers from pervasive poverty. In addition to a scarcity of jobs, education levels are low among the 9,000 villagers; few achieve a high school diploma and many women do not finish primary school. With its understanding of the cashew value chain, EBC’s management believed that overcoming Indonesian cashew growers’ low yields would offer a major business opportunity while aligning with the company’s core mission of bringing sustainable positive change to impoverished smallholder communities.

Since its launch in 2012, EBC has created 350 jobs in Ban – 85 percent of them held by previously unemployed women. Two high-impact social programs further EBC’s inclusive strategy. Located onsite at the factory, the AnaKardia Kids early learning center offers childcare and educational opportunities for 60 young children of EBC employees and the surrounding community. Its innovative nutrition and education programming has produced a new generation of children who are achieving above the local average in school readiness and health.

EBC has also introduced cash crops and established community processing centers. The introduction of cash-crop farming and simultaneous best-practice training have doubled the yearly incomes of 300 farming families by transforming 50 hectares of idle land into profitable agro-businesses. This social innovation has revamped the farm-to-factory cashew value chain while creating lasting benefits for those at the base of the economic pyramid. CPCs have also empowered 1,000 farmer families to engage in quality management and value-addition activities, raising their yearly incomes by 30 percent.