Solvay plants corn in Brazil

25 employees in Brazil spent their Saturday planting corn — boosted by the Solvay’s own AgRHO™ GSB — on behalf of the Salve Sanfra organization, in order to ensure a plentiful community harvest this coming July. Evandro de Paula, HR specialist at Solvay, tells us more…

With Solvay’s help, up to 3600 cornstalks were planted on Salve Sanfra’s 2000 m2 community garden, bringing the yield to around 650 kg of maize — enough to make a lot of pamonha, a traditional Brazilian dish. The seeds planted were treated with AgRHO™ GSB, a Solvay product that helps to increase a harvest between 2 to 15%, depending on the crop, type of soil and the weather.

Corn Festival 2“From now until July, Solvay volunteers will oversee the process from A to Z — planting to harvest,” Evandro explains. “In July, the volunteers will return to harvest the corn.” The harvest will set the scene for the local Corn Festival, organized together with Salve Sanfra and members of the community.

All proceeds will go to Salve Sanfra, a non-profit organization that runs several social projects in Itatiba, Brazil and keeps up to sixty children per day occupied with theater, circus, arts and sports activities. Aside from that, they also run workshops and educational activities.

Corn Festival 3“This is the start of something big,” says Evandro. “This collaboration is creating an important interaction between Solvay and the community. For example, two employees who were involved in the project are now teaching classes for underprivileged children in their spare time.”

The initiative is another demonstration of how Solvay colleagues are striving to meet the Group’s objective to double the number of employees involved in societal actions by 2020.