The retail chain Shwapno wants to bring 5,000 Bangladeshi farmers into sustainable farming by 2030. It announced the plan on Sunday at a hotel in Gulshan, Dhaka, when it published its first Sustainability Report 2025, which covers four years of work from July 2021 to June 2025.
Shwapno says it has trained more than 2,000 farmers, 150 of whom have GLOBALG.A.P. certification for 22 crops. By 2030 it aims to train more than 3,000 farmers to the GLOBALG.A.P. standard and to bring more than 300 farmers under certification for more than 40 crops.
According to the company, it now buys about 60 percent of its vegetables, 53 percent of its fish and 47 percent of its chicken directly through more than 142 collection points. Shwapno says cutting stages out of the supply chain has reduced post-harvest losses from about 25 percent to 5 percent.
A "Buy only what you need" scheme lets shoppers buy fresh produce in smaller amounts; selling watermelon cut to order brought waste of that product down from 5.03 percent to 1.76 percent, and the company plans to extend it to pumpkin, papaya and jackfruit. Store electricity use fell about 27.5 percent in 2024-25 from the year before, and some outlets now use solar power.
ACI Group managing director Arif Dowla said at the event that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make Shwapno's supply chain more efficient was growing. Shwapno has more than 1,000 outlets in all 64 districts and more than 10,120 staff.
For farmers the news is the plan to widen direct buying and certification; the figures come from the company's own release and report. The story is by Prothom Alo's business desk.
Photo: Emon / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Source: Prothom Alo
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