Feb.27 - A bridge between Italy and Africa to present African communities with the Italian agricultural model. "Texere Congo" kicked off two year ago thanks to Cesena based "Texere" agricultural cooperative. Gian Luca Bagnara, president of the Italian company, underlined the project’s main goals: "explore the territory and reach an agreement with local villages to provide qualified services. Our aim is to organize sustainable supply chains through the whole economic." After an initial phase dedicated to programming , Texere set up a company with the local Diocese of Boma, "and it’s the first time the Church joined forces with a private foreign agricultural company." Local populations "have a great amount of land available, but won’t grow anything because they don’t know how to organize production. We want to provide low-cost services, working directly on the territory with the consent of the owners." The President of Texere is proud of the results that the initiative is getting: "the community welcomed us with open arms and we have other projects now kicking off in Ghana and Mozambique." The project's numbers speak for themselves: 30.000 hectares of land for 20.000 people working on them. "In October - says Bagnara - we'll start planting and in 2016 we will have the first harvest." The grassroots approach aims at creating income and providing local communities with appropriate markets.

TEXERE
Texere is a cooperative of farmers born in Forlì -Cesena, Emilia Romagna in 2011 via private capital. With a population of about 400.000 inhabitants, the value of agricultural production in the area is about €700 million. Agriculture and industrial process are vertically integrated via the cooperative. In this way, even small companies can compete in the world market. Gilberto Cecchi, Director of Texere, has 30 years of experience in the organization and direction of established companies in Italy and in Europe.