Tous les projets

Our Mission

With Blue Bees, citizens invest in tomorrow’s agriculture

Blue Bees considers nutrition as a vital daily act which links us to nature, but also as an essential element of our economy and cultural patrimony.

Blus Bees has an economic role

Blue Bees supports agricultural entrepreneurs working for a new agriculture: on a human scale, with various crops, creating jobs, and not very dependent on oil and chemicals.    

Blue Bees offers citizens the possibility to be actors of their economy by investing their savings in meaningful agricultural projects, which respects human and its environment.

Blue Bees promotes the local processing of the products to create marketable products with a higher value added, reduce unsold stocks and develop producers’ brands.

Blus Bees has a social role

Blue Bees supports short sale networks (through internet or specialized shop) for a local consumption of the product, aiming at developing the social link between producers and consumers, food autonomy of the territories and potential new jobs in the sector.  

Blue Bees supports fair trade by participating to the pre-funding of crops for small producers’ cooperatives.

Blue Bees has an educational role

Blue Bees wants to get farmers and consumers closer, by telling on its platform the story of the funded projects’ products and terroir.

Blue Bees wants to get lenders aware, both North and South, of the many benefits of a more responsible agriculture.

Challenges

  • The ecological transition : an essential step

We are depending on the leaving to ensure the sustainability and fulfillment of our species on the Planet. This acknowledgement brings us to change our vision of the world and society. We need to distinguish wealth creation and resources consumption.

In this time of ecological transition, the major challenge of the 21st century, it is crucial to develop a new economy :

  • Local (produce for a local processing and consumption)
  • Circular (in opposition with a linear economy : extract, use, reject)
  • Sober in the consumption of non-renewable resources
  • Creative of jobs and social links
  • Collaborative (sharing, pooling of goods and services, promotion of use instead of possession).

2) Agriculture, the first step towards this essential ecological transition

  • Agriculture is the first employer in the world (40% of jobs in the world, only 5% in industrialized countries). In France, 200 farms disappear every week and agricultural employment represents today only 2% of national employment! It is time to reverse the trend. If the same evolution happened in Africa, rural exodus would be massive, and thus the movement of economic refugees would increase exponentially.
  • Agriculture and climate are linked:
    • Intensive agriculture is the first emitter of greenhouses gases in the world (including deforestation related to agriculture)
    • Agriculture is threatened by climate change, especially in the South (drought, desertification, soil degradation).
  • Agriculture should feed 9 billion people in 2050, that’s to say 30% more than today!
  • Family farming is threatened by capitalistic land appropriations.

3) A limited access to the financial system

The traditional financial system gets the saver’s money “works” by investing it in projects selected by bankers from their own criteria grid. Thus, plenty of projects, in particular in the southern countries and related to the agricultural sector, are left behind by the banks, as they are considered too risky. Therefore, too many projects, yet economically viable, can’t emerge.

As the following diagram shows, small projects of one person or of a family are funded by micro-finance institutions (MFI). So that the borrower can repay his loan, his added value must be quick if not immediate, as rates imposed by micro-finance institutions don’t allow loans over months.

  • Big SME ß traditional banks
  • Very small company/small company ß missing middle
  • Micro company/Individual entrepreneur ß MFI

Big projects are easily funded by banks, investment funds or investment agencies.

And in the middle, the forgotten of the financial system (the « missing middle”), regularly left behind by traditional banks who find those kind of projects, particularly agricultural, too risky.

In order to support agricultural and promising SMEs, the meso-finance must be done directly, thanks to platforms like Blue Bees!

Blue Bees aims at getting leaders of innovative projects from all over the world closer to web users concerned with using their money for useful and virtuous purposes, to build the agricultural and nutrition system of tomorrow!

Blue Bees is an ethic and solidary tool for savings.