Archive for the ‘Farmers’ Category


Food preservation techniques taught by Healthy Choice MPCS enable entrepreneurial  opportunities for employment seekers.

Food preservation skills.

Healthy Choice MPCS, the food skills training organization founded by international food professionals to help Nigerians maximize use of foods grown by farmers and provide entrepreneurial opportunities to jobseekers in the hospitality and food industry, has expanded its food preservation and training initiative.

The food preservation and training initiative gives free and low-cost instruction in food processing quality control to small-scale food producers looking to raise the value of the food products they bring to market. Christiana Ebisi, founder of Healthy Choice MPCS and a retired American food business owner who operated her business in the U.S. for many years remarked, “As the middle class in this country grows, so too does their taste for a higher quality product. To capture the attention of upscale customers, food producers must have a superior product and we are helping them put superior food products on the market.”

Ebisi knows food very well. She moved to the United States to study the subject at university in the 1970′s and was hired to supervise food programs for the Metropolitan Medical Center in the state of Minnesota. She founded a company exporting African foods and other products internationally in the 1980′s and faced one challenge in the beginning-quality control. “While we received many orders from all across the world, I found that if I was not present when the shipment left the dock, I could not guarantee if sand was in a batch of bitter leaf. I had to be present for everything and train on quality control measures which matched the expectations of buyers overseas,” Ebisi said.

Years later, the customers who require top quality food product are not in foreign countries, but right here. “Customers have many options, including imported foods. We are helping farmers and food producers on ground secure their share of the food industry by providing customers with a superior food product and that comes with education,” Ebisi said. Healthy Choice MPCS is helping job seekers in food and hospitality create winning entrepreneurial opportunities for themselves based on international food industry know-how.

Healthy Choice MPCS is working on a number of exciting initiatives to further job creation in the food and hospitality industry and is expanding relationships with other organizations in the country to do so. “We have received interest from agencies looking to partner with us on training their staff/ their students for entrepreneurial careers in the food industry,” Ebisi mentioned. “We look forward to sharing our technical knowledge through winning skills acquisition programs.”

To learn more about Healthy Choice MPCS and our programs for entrepreneurship and economic development through food, please visit the website www.healthychoicempcs.org

Bettina Luescher, former anchor for CNN and Chief Spokesperson World Food Programme, Faye Nwafor of Healthy Choice MPCS and Jaya Sarkar of Trickle Up on food panel for United Nations Association.

Bettina Luescher, former anchor for CNN and Chief Spokesperson World Food Programme, Faye Nwafor of Healthy Choice MPCS and Jaya Sarkar of Trickle Up on food panel for United Nations Association.

Strengthening consumer and farmer education was one of the key recommendations of the United Nations Association Post-2015 Development Agenda Consultations roundtable on Affordable and Nutritious Food / Sustainable Agriculture, held at The New York Times headquarters in New York at the end of 2013. The consultations were conducted to inform the United Nations Secretary-General’s office of Post 2015 MDG agenda perspectives from civil society and the private sector on issues of anti-poverty and sustainability. Bettina Luescher, former CNN anchor and Chief spokesperson for World Food Programme, joined fellow panelists, Jaya Sarkar of Trickle Up, Jessica Sobel of Unilever, consultant Megan Wiseley, and Faye Nwafor of Healthy Choice MPCS to discuss opportunities for cross-sectoral collaboration, investment and policy priorities to maximize consumer knowledge about and access to affordable and nutritious food in America, Africa and the rest of the world.

The significant role to be played through public-private partnerships was championed by several panelists including Ms. Wiseley and Ms. Nwafor, the latter of whom’s background in surveying comparative food systems for healthier eating and a sustainable farming environment informed discussions on the necessity for crop diversification in meeting both consumer nutritional needs and the economic solvency of smallholder farmers. The panel concluded that an equally important priority necessitating further discussion was the empowerment of smallholder farmers with the aim of strengthening global food sovereignty. The roundtable findings, a program of the United Nations Foundation, will be presented by the Secretary-General in a report to the 68th General Assembly.