Hand sown, regeneratively grown
GreenPath began operating in the southern highlands of Ethiopia, helping smallholder famers bring their products – green beans, papayas, avocado, lemongrass and more – to the premium markets of Europe and the Middle East.
As the first EU organic certified company in the country, GreenPath’s smallholder farmer network is able to tap into growing international demand for regeneratively grown organic produce, dramatically increasing smallholder incomes.
GreenPath supports farmers to replace mono-crops with a variety of trees, shrubs and ground crops; resulting in mini food forests of densely sewn fruit, veg and herbs. Carefully packaged, GreenPath manages the distribution directly to supplier warehouses in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Qatar and the UAE.
It oversees the entire supply chain, from seed to shopping basket.
A dedicated team of agronomists visits partner farms to troubleshoot and offer advice, ensuring inputs are lowered and soil health and yield increased. Civil war in Ethiopia galvanised GreenPath into sponsoring regenerative agricultural practices outside the country by providing market access to other partner farms adopting these practices.
A can-do approach characterises this company. For example, when the team found the handling of harvested herbs was proving tricky thanks to their fragility and perishability, it rejected an initial idea to dry the herbs and sell them in bulk to herbal tea producers and instead set up its own brand of herbal tea. Kib Tea was created, developed and hit the shelves in 2019.
Jacie Jones
Co-founder
“The world tends to focus on what African smallholders don’t have and can’t do, rather than what they do have and can do. We saw tremendous opportunity in the diverse agro ecologies, diligent and inexpensive labour, organic land availability and extraordinary work ethic across the hundreds of small farms we visited.”
2018
Novastar invests in GreenPath’s Series A
