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LANDMARK 2016
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Name:
Jason Green
Course:
BSc (Hons) Agriculture and Land Management
Class of:
1993
PROFILE
Out
of Africa
s Head of Cocoa Sustainability
at Ecom Agroindustrial Corp.
Ltd, Jason Green knows a thing
or two about sustainable agriculture and
social responsibility. Following a 20-year
career in the African coffee and cocoa
markets, Jason set up the department
which currently works with more than
160,000 farmers in Ghana, Ivory Coast,
Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ecuador, Colombia,
and Peru, to market their crops and
increase productivity.
“I spend half of my time
talking to chocolate
makers such as
Nestlé, Mars, Lindt,
and Ferrero about
why they should be
investing in sustainable
sourcing, and the other half travelling to
these countries to supervise the projects
and meet the farmers. It’s really interesting
work which I find incredibly rewarding.”
Having grown up on a farm, and spent six
months of a gap year tobacco planting in
Zimbabwe, Jason always knew that he
wanted to work within large scale farming
or estate management. “After four glorious
years at the RAU, I focused my attentions
on getting back to Africa. Unfortunately, I
had no idea how to do this, so I decided
to write to the African offices of the six
largest global commodities traders, stating
that I was travelling to their country so
they might as well give me an interview!”
It was a long shot, but it paid off. Jason
received the call he’d been waiting for and
booked a one-way ticket to Nairobi. “As a
Bush Coffee Buyer in southern Tanzania,
I went into rural villages to negotiate with
village elders to buy their crop. Coffee was
stored in huge, broken-down warehouses
until it went for auction. Coffee yields
per hectare were very low, so farmer
livelihoods were quite poor.” After three
years, Jason moved to Kilimanjaro to do
a similar job, whilst also building a large
coffee milling factory in Moshi. “This was
a fantastic location to be buying coffee
A gap year in Zimbabwe sparked Jason Green’s life-long
passion for Africa, a passion which saw him embark
on an exciting career developing sustainable agriculture
programmes within global coffee and cocoa
trading companies.