Luno have announced that they have partnered with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in support of climate smart farming in South Africa. According to an announcing blog post on their website: “The future of finance needs a home. Let’s build one together.”
WWF working in South Africa
In South Africa, there are approximately two million smallholder or household farmers compared to 35 000 commercial growers. Many of these farmers rely predominantly on the land to feed their families, hopefully having some surplus left to sell or trade. Intense weather events erode soils and landscapes, which reduce the carrying capacity of these areas for livestock grazing as well as reducing crop yields. This affects local food security for millions, as well as impacting their livelihoods.
World Wildlife Fund South Africa is working with the Mahlathini Development Foundation to promote, capacitate, and support rural smallholder farmers to commit to climate smart farming practises and obtain better access to trading and alternative markets.
‘Climate smart farming’ is a remedial approach to declining biodiversity and volume in food crops around the world. By working with farmers, a climate smart approach to farming aims to solve the problems of farming for food today, which include:
- Increasing productivity to be able to feed more people
- Enhanced resilience to droughts, pests, shorter or longer seasons, etc.
- Reducing harmful emissions during production
WWF aims to build capacity through training, as well as developing collective stewardship initiatives around conservation-worthy landscapes and utilising various incentives to improve market access. The focus is on farmers who are situated in areas of high biodiversity and strategic water source areas. To shift away from unsustainable agricultural systems, the climate smart farming approach focuses on multi-cropping, water conservation and protection of the natural resource base.
According to the post, this is a way for Luno to give back and engage with their community in South Africa by supporting this work. The crypto exchange is asking their community to help them raise one whole Bitcoin for the project.
Users can take part by sharing a video on social media about why they are investing in Bitcoin for their own future. For every video shared tagging @LunoGlobal and using #investingtogether, Luno will donate 500,000 satoshis (currently worth approximately $200) to the WWF. The blog post does confirm that terms and conditions apply.
Global Crypto will report on the initiative as donation and social data becomes publicly available.
