Founded in 2015, Fargreen is a social enterprise that aims to build prosperous farming communities, whilst tackling environmentally damaging farming practices. The idea for Fargreen came from its current CEO, Trang, who was inspired to use business as a tool to sustainably solve the common practice of burning rice straw openly after harvesting in many major rice producing countries like Vietnam.

Fargreen sets up a network of farmers who, instead of burning their own rice straw after harvesting, collect the straw and use it to produce premium edible mushrooms. The leftover after mushroom cultivation is recycled back to nourish the soil as bio-fertilizer for rice and vegetable crops, thus resulting in a closed loop business model. Since its founding, Fargreen has directly benefitted over 100 farmers, and has also played a part in reducing CO2 emissions from burning straw.

Their model has been extremely successful; there has been immense interest, both from high end restaurants and hotels in Vietnam, seeking to purchase their premium quality mushrooms in large quantities, and from INGOs looking to replicate their model in other parts of Vietnam and SE Asia.

FarGreen received an initial grant (through awards) to sustain them for three years; at the end of these three years, there is very little money available to the organisation. Trang is operating a very lean model, and feels that she needs to demonstrate sound financials before she applies for funding and/or investment. Given the interest in her work and model, she is now considering the next phase for the organisation and is seeking a business partner to support her in building sound controls, and accounting & financial management systems, in understanding where their strengths lie and how best to expand, and the resources required to do so.

For more information, visit their website.