Can restoring land create jobs? These young entrepreneurs are proving it

In Senegal, Daniel Halman is working with a simple idea: if a farmer can produce more on less land, part of that land can be freed up for restoration.

His company, Féro, combines high-productivity greenhouses with agroforestry systems. Crops grown inside the greenhouses can be sold relatively quickly, while fruit trees and native species are planted elsewhere on the farm. By balancing production with restoration, the model aims to reduce the amount of land needed for cultivation while making restoration economically viable.

Mr. Halman discovered the potential of restoration as a student, after taking part in a small project planting trees and restoring soil.

“You can, of course, choose to do this as an NGO, but I specifically chose to continue as a company,” he said during an event in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, host city of COP17 of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD).

Time was the biggest obstacle. While trees can take years to generate an economic return, businesses need income far sooner. Féro’s answer is to combine restoration with greenhouse crops that can be harvested and sold more quickly.

“In Senegal, people love onions, so we thought this is an excellent opportunity,” Mr. Halman said, explaining that identifying an environmental problem is only part of the equation. For a business to succeed, it must also respond to market demand.

Solar-powered sensors to use water and inputs more efficiently

Ritkatmun Bwemana, co-founder of Green Eden Farms, came to entrepreneurship through her own experience as a smallholder farmer in Nigeria. She knew first-hand the pressure to produce more food from soils that were losing their productivity.

Her company developed ScareGrow, a solar-powered precision agriculture system that helps farmers make decisions about water and other inputs, avoiding more than the soil requires.

For Green Eden Farms, success is not measured simply by how many farmers use the technology or how many devices the company sells.

“We want to know if they are actually saving water, using fewer inputs and using resources at the right time and in the right places,” she said.

For Ms. Bwemana, that is also the key to larger-scale restoration: it has to offer a tangible benefit to those who depend on the land.

“If you go to a farmer and say, ‘This is land restoration,’ but it doesn’t make economic sense to them, they won’t buy it.”

Turning agricultural waste into a tool for healthier soils

In Ecuador, Carlos Alfredo González Vargas saw opportunity in two challenges at once. Years of intensive use had left agricultural land less productive, while large quantities of forestry and agricultural residues were being burned, abandoned or left to decay.

His answer was Pacchar, a company he founded in 2021 that turns forestry and agricultural residues into biochar, a type of charcoal returned to the soil. Its porous structure helps retain water and nutrients, reducing the need for fertilisers, while carbon can remain stored for long periods.

Pacchar currently works with producers of cocoa, bananas, roses, vegetables and other crops in several provinces of Ecuador. According to the entrepreneur, it has worked with more than 100 farming communities and applied soil restoration practices across more than 500 hectares.

“It was heartbreaking to see productive farmland and ecosystems turn into deserts,” Mr. González recalled. “That gave me a real sense of urgency to start the business, because restoring land cannot wait.”

He says that after a few years, the trials have shown improvements in crop yields as well as savings in water and fertilisers.

But results alone were not enough to win over farmers. Many were skeptical because the same company selling the solution was also presenting the evidence that it worked.

“You’re doing the research, but you’re also selling me the product. I don’t believe you,” González recalled being told.

In response, Pacchar partnered with universities and independent research institutions to test the results across different soils and crops.

“Innovations have to come hand in hand with research so we can build up credibility,” he said.

Using AI to turn farm intelligence into opportunity

Mashrur H. Shurid faced a similar challenge in Bangladesh: earning farmers’ trust in a context where more erratic rainfall, floods, drought and salinity were making farming decisions increasingly difficult.

When he began developing Aunkur in 2021, one of his first hurdles was convincing them that technology could provide information precise enough to be genuinely useful in the field.

Aunkur combines data about soil, weather and the farm itself to help small producers decide what to plant, when to plant and how to manage crops as conditions change. According to Mr. Shurid, the system now supports more than 33,000 farms in Bangladesh and has begun pilots in other countries.

For farmers, a technical reading is of little use if it cannot be translated into a concrete decision.

“This is the seed you should be selecting, this is the fertiliser you should be applying, and this is the dosage you should be applying,” Mr. Shurid explained.

Once those data prove useful, Aunkur can also connect small producers with buyers and financial institutions that otherwise have little information to assess them. 

“When we see that the farmers are actually seeing tangible value, we need to measure that,” Mr. Shurid said. That evidence, he added, can then be presented to banks and investors.

Building businesses around land restoration

The four entrepreneurs are among those taking part in the Youth Ecopreneur Programme (YECO), an initiative of the International Trade Centre and UNCCD’s G20 Global Land Initiative that helps young people develop environmental businesses and prepare to attract investment.

In its latest edition, the programme supported 225 entrepreneurs from around the world, with 25 selected for an advanced phase offering guidance on business models, intellectual property and investment readiness.

The broader ambition is to build what organisers describe as a restoration economy, one in which restoring land generates livelihoods and creates market opportunities, rather than relying indefinitely on public projects or donations.

“We need the solutions that are out there from the communities and that are activating markets as well, so this can make the change and the restoration sustainable,” said Fabiola Nava of the G20 Global Land Initiative.

For the entrepreneurs, the support has been practical. Mr. Shurid received advice from the World Intellectual Property Organization on Aunkur’s intellectual property strategy. Mr. González highlighted training on approaching investors and connections that later helped Pacchar establish research partnerships and attract investment. Bwemana valued specialised mentoring, while Halman pointed to training in business skills ranging from selling a product to protecting an idea.

If their ideas, and those of other young entrepreneurs like them, can scale, they could help turn restoration from an activity dependent on repeated funding into one that creates lasting economic value for the people restoring the land, and gives them a reason to keep doing it.