Solvay and P&G Join Forces in Industry- Leading Effort to Double the Global Supply of Sustainable Guar Farming in India
The partnership with P&G Beauty in the Sustainable Guar Initiative will accelerate sustainable growth of guar at scale, empower more women farmers, and further improve the livelihoods of smallholder guar bean farmers in India
Solvay, a leading global supplier of naturally-derived polymers for beauty care formulations, has announced that P&G Beauty has joined its Sustainable Guar Initiative (SGI), an industry-leading program launched in 2015, aimed at developing sustainable guar production at scale within the Bikaner desert district of Rajasthan, India. The district is one of the country’s largest guar producers and supplies Solvay with guar as a natural and renewable resource for Jaguar® used in hair and body care formulations.
“I am delighted to welcome P&G Beauty to the Sustainable Guar Initiative,” said Solvay CEO Ilham Kadri. “Through this fantastic partnership we will be able to significantly increase our impact and I’m particularly proud that together we will ramp up our efforts to empower farmers, especially women farmers. This is a win for farmers, customers and consumers.”
With the partnership of P&G Beauty, one of the market leaders in the beauty category, the SGI program will nearly double its reach in the region. It will significantly expand its efforts to equip guar farmers, especially women farmers, with the tools and knowledge in good agricultural practices1 that promote continuous improvement on key outcomes like higher-yield production and crop productivity, improved financial stability, and better living and working conditions.
P&G Beauty’s partnership will add 5,250 new farmers to the program, bringing the total reach of the SGI program to just over 11,000 famers. This includes doubling the reach and scale of the program with women, by training, supporting, and empowering 1,800 additional women as farmers, entrepreneurs, workers, and members of farming households.
In addition, P&G Beauty will enable the SGI program to double the number of women trained (nearly 900 in total) in the adoption of household hygienic practices as well as in the building of kitchen gardens, which will give women and their families the ability to improve their food security, household nutritional diversity and their livelihoods. The P&G Beauty project will also include the construction of a new johad (a local community owned pond), designed to improve the capture and percolation of rainwater for home use, animal hydration as well as the establishment of a community plantation unit.
“We are proud to join forces with Solvay to significantly expand the positive impact of the Sustainable Guar Initiative and to accelerate the growth of this important program,” says Alex Keith, CEO, P&G Beauty. “Working in partnership with Solvay and TechnoServe India is enabling our continued commitment to Responsible Beauty and to being a positive force for beauty in the world. We hope this program inspires others to invest in the sustainable growth of guar, empowerment of women farmers and improving the lives and livelihoods of farming communities in India.”
“As a founding member of the Sustainable Guar Initiative, our aim is to conceive, demonstrate, and refine scalable actions for an inclusive, sustainable growth of the Guar production system in India,” explains Punit Gupta, Country Director, TechnoServe India. “We are delighted to welcome P&G Beauty on this important effort as they move to become a buyer and funder of sustainable guar. Being one of the market leaders in the beauty category, P&G Beauty’s partnership is a significant step in support of TechnoServe’s work to promote sustainable livelihoods among smallholder guar bean farmers in India.”
About the Sustainable Guar Initiative
The SGI program was launched by Solvay in 2015 and empowers guar farmers with tools and knowledge for cultivating their crops. The program includes training in climate-smart agricultural practices to improve and stabilize guar yield and increase soil fertility. It also aims to enhance the Bikaner region’s climate preparedness and resilience. From 2015 to the end of 2020, the initiative led to a 125 percent increase in guar yields and an increase in revenues to guar farmers of 143 percent.
Solvay is further enhancing social impact by leveraging blockchain and building a digital platform, with two partners TechnoServe and BanQu, tracing the transaction from farm to shampoo. So far, this platform is available for 2000 farmers to record their transactions of guar volumes and related payments.
With P&G Beauty’s partnership, the program will double its impact and scale, strengthening its action amongst areas such as, but not limited to, ensuring that local children are not missing school, that communities have access to clean and safe drinking water, that women and families are trained on best practices for health and hygiene, that practices are established to monitor the survival of plantations, and that a local Farmer Producer Organization is created to ensure economic stability of the farmers and their families. Read more on Solvay’s Sustainable Guar Initiative program here.
