Looking Back on Last Year’s Successes and Our Momentum Moving Forward

Grow Further has the wind at its back.

We were officially registered just seven years ago. Our founder and CEO, Peter Kelly, created Grow Further in 2018, and that first year of our existence was all about “planning, learning about nonprofit management, and assembling a board,” as Peter recalled.

Flash forward to today, and his vision is more than just a reality.

We are hitting our stride and are poised to make a real difference in the lives of smallholder farmers. Thanks to our donor members and other partners, research and development projects in Africa that would’ve never gotten off the ground are now moving forward and making steady progress. We’re now supporting four innovative food security programs, and we’re only getting started.

“In 2025, we’re planning to launch programs in India,” Peter said. He’s also thinking about writing a book on Grow Further, his experiences founding our organization, and his quest to connect people and ideas for a more food-secure future capable of adequately nourishing the expanding human population.

The beginning of a new year is about making resolutions for the future, but also about reflecting on the previous year—what went wrong, what went right, what could’ve gone better, and what transpired better than we expected. In that spirit, this newsletter’s author asked Peter to reflect on 2024 and prior years, to consider our recent past, the growth and evolution of Grow Further over the years, and what’s next for our organization.

In short, Grow Further has emerged as an idea into an expanding and thriving nonprofit organization supporting programs that will transform the lives of millions of smallholder farmers while improving nutrition and food security for an even greater number of people. There’s much more to do, of course, but it’s been a fascinating and exciting ride so far, and we’re excited for what’s to come.

Proud of our past

2018 is our official legal founding year.  During the pandemic, we planned initiatives, made ourselves known, and prepared to hit the ground running.

In 2025, we plan to go global, expanding our reach beyond the four countries in Africa where we’re active today. 2024 was a fantastic year for Grow Further, but Peter says 2023 was more pivotal in our evolution.

“The vision was finally becoming a reality when grant applications started coming in faster and faster towards the deadline and we ended up getting over 700,” he recalled. He would’ve taken to the great outdoors to celebrate, but unfortunately, Mother Nature wasn’t as cooperative that day. “It was an exciting time, and I remember that the weather wasn’t nice enough to go outside, so I instead set a new personal record on the treadmill.”

There have been ups and downs, naturally, but progress has generally been smooth. There are enough like-minded people and organizations as passionate about food security as we are, and plenty of worthy research project ideas that can’t get launched only for lack of funding. That’s where we come in.

“It hasn’t been very hard to find great projects, and projects have gone well to date,” Peter said.

We received our first batch of grant applications in 2023. As Peter noted, over 700 applications came in, far more than we expected. After a careful and fair review process, we narrowed that number down. Two worthy projects in Ghana and Tanzania were selected as our first two grantees. Last year, we added two more to that list, bold but promising research and development initiatives in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.

 

“Agricultural innovation should be a multi-billion-dollar charitable category, compared to close to zero today.”

 

2023 may have been a busier year for us, but that doesn’t mean 2024 was comparatively calmer by any measure. “A lot happened in 2024 too, such as more than doubling our grant portfolio,” Peter recalled. “2023 was about establishing programs, 2024 about expanding and improving them.”

Peter says Grow Further met its goals last year, not an easy task for an organization as young as ours. We added two additional staff members who are now helping us go from strength to strength. Jody Santoro is our marketing and communications guru who’s bringing technical savvy to our public-facing efforts. Venkat Pegadaraju is our new Vice President for Development. His two decades of experience in life sciences and business is proving to be a major asset.

“I’m pleased with Venkat and Jody, our new staff from 2024,” Peter said. “We were lucky to find them, and they’re positioning the organization for major growth ahead.”

 

Excited for our future

We’re excited to be supporting four promising, worthy, and innovative projects in four corners of sub-Saharan Africa.

Our partners in Ghana are making progress in developing the first commercial variety of Bambara groundnut, a climate-resilient superfood. In Tanzania, grantees are closing in on launching a powerful smartphone application that tells farmers when their fields are threatened by diseases and pests. In Zimbabwe, our members are assisting two major food security nonprofits to develop and disseminate an iron-rich variety of pearl millet. In Ethiopia, Grow Further partners are pushing ahead with plans to improve off-season wheat cultivation through improved and efficient irrigation.

Next up: India. Grow Further will soon be on the lookout for great ideas to improve nutrition and food security there, and is working with the government and other stakeholders to align priorities.

We don’t know what proposals we’ll receive, but we’re excited about what’s coming. Meanwhile, Peter has some ideas about what types of applications he’d like to see come to the fore, in India or elsewhere. “I’m hoping to see good proposals in the area of alternative species in agriculture, such as seaweed and edible insects,” he explained, to give a few examples.

2025 has barely begun. What’s in store for Grow Further in 2025 and beyond? A promising future with lots of work ahead but lots of gains to be had.

“Expansion in India in 2025,” Peter said, “then continuing to expand programs and diversify funding sources while the initial projects see increased adoption and improve food security.”

Farther down the line, Peter said he’d like to launch a venture capital fund that would be affiliated with Grow Further, a big step in “building an innovation ecosystem of similar organizations like the sector of medical research charities.”

Peter has repeatedly said that Grow Further can achieve a lot in this field, but it can’t build a more food-secure future all on its own. We need allies in this battle for a better future for smallholder farmers and the communities they feed.

“Agricultural innovation should be a multi-billion-dollar charitable category, compared to close to zero today,” he said. “I don’t know what our market share will be within that, but on some level, it doesn’t matter.” 

 

— Grow Further

Photo: A picture we took from the 2024 Borlaug Dialogue, the flagship conference in Des Moines, Iowa sponsored by the World Food Prize Foundation.

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Categories

Newsletter Signup

Newsletter Sign-up Popup