Land O’Lakes International Development
Land O’Lakes International Development helps communities around the world build economies by strengthening agriculture from farm-to-fork, helping businesses grow, and linking farmers to markets. Founded in 1981, as a division of Land O’Lakes, Inc., Land O’Lakes International Development is now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that continues to leverage the nearly 100 years of expertise in dairy, animal nutrition, crop inputs and agricultural insights of our affiliate, Land O’Lakes, Inc., a farmer-owned cooperative agribusiness driven by its purpose: feeding human progress. Land O’Lakes International Development’s worldwide team is committed to market-led approaches, and passionate about collaborating locally to create lasting inclusive economic growth.
The relationship between Land O’Lakes International Development and its $15 billion corporate affiliate provides best in class expertise, resources and technology to donors. Land O’Lakes implemented projects, such as the Cooperative Development Program, gain access to the technical bench of both an experienced development organization with experienced gained over 285 international projects, as well as talent and expertise from Land O’Lakes, Inc.’s diversified businesses. These businesses include: Purina Animal Nutrition, the number 1 feed brand in the United States; WinField United, whose products cover more than half of America’s harvested acres; and Land O’Lakes Dairy Foods, which sells the number 1 retail butter brand in the U.S. Because of its affiliation with one of the world’s most influential agribusinesses, Land O’Lakes International Development has a unique end to end view of the supply chain, as illustrated below. http://www.landolakes.org
Land O’Lakes has implemented several cooperative development programs. The most recent programs include the Cooperative Development Program- 3 (CD3) which was active in East Africa for eight years. Initially working with vertically integrated dairy cooperatives in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia, the program later refined its scope to work more heavily in Rwanda, expand to maize and include cooperative apex institutions.
The Seed Cooperative Alliance was a shorter program focused in Tanzania and Rwanda that supported building alliances in the maize seed value chain between cooperatives, input suppliers and other key stakeholders. Both projects included unique research, collaboration and dissemination sub activities aimed at information generation and promoting the cooperative development movement.