Ashmore Brings Successful Technology-Focused Community Project to Southeast Asia

London, UK, January 3, 2017 (Newswire.com) - ​Ashmore International has once again made a name for itself among local farming communities, this time in Southeast Asia (SEA), by being an active and engaged member of the communities where it operates. Apart from participating in disaster and hunger relief efforts, and environmental preservation, Ashmore International places a strong CSR focus on championing social initiatives and projects for local communities to promote education and literacy.

The South American farming community where Ashmore has significant operations in has benefited from this through its ‘Technology for better Crop Productivity’ project launched in 2015 that brought about higher farming productivity, increased earnings and correspondingly improved standards of living and conditions. The great success of this initiative, which has been attributed with an average projected increase in crop production of 2 Ton/Hectare, prompted Ashmore to launch this in the SEA markets it operates in, such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Similarly, in SEA this initiative aims to promote the awareness of current issues and challenges the agricultural sector is faced with, and educate the local farming communities on how the use of technology can alleviate some of these problems, and increase crop productivity. With SEA contributing to more than 50% of the world’s total production of rice, these initiatives are skewed towards improving rice farming productivity. Some of these technological know-hows seek to educate local farmers on include newer irrigation methods, more environmentally friendly fertilizers which result in shorter land fertility restoration periods after a round of harvesting, the introduction of more weather-resistant high yield rice varieties and how to adapt farming methods to these new strains.

The increased demand for food due to population and income growth, and the impacts of climate change on agriculture will continue to ramp up the pressure for increased and more sustainable agricultural production to feed the planet. As part of Ashmore International’s commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), its senior management will continue to provide full support and allocate resources for employees to lead initiatives in local SEA communities it operates it, to reduce pressures of these global agricultural challenges, and thereby improving the communities where their farmers and employees work and live in.

Ashmore’s Chief Operating Officer, Ruth Whelan shared that “the objective of these sponsored community projects for local farmers was not only targeted at increasing yield productivity, and also reducing production costs per kg of crop harvested. This also creates an all-win outcome where costs savings are passed on to consumers in the form of reduced prices while local farmers and workers in the agricultural value chain are able to get higher earnings.”

Source: Ashmore International