The Business of Agriculture

Immense hunger drives Andrew Youn, a 2006 graduate of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. But it isn’t his; it’s the hunger of farm families in Sub-Saharan Africa, where children routinely die from hunger-related causes and one in three rural children are permanently stunted from a lifetime of not eating enough.

At the start of his second year at Kellogg, Youn devised a business solution for this grave social problem: help farmers grow their way out of poverty. In March 2006, he founded One Acre Fund, a nonprofit social enterprise that provides smallholder farmers with seed, fertilizer, training and market facilitation.

Youn and a team of five staffers initially worked with 40 farmers and tripled their take-home income in the first six months. Today, One Acre Fund serves more than 600,000 farmers in Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda and Malawi and an additional 800,000 farmers through government partnerships. With more than 6,000 full-time staff members, One Acre is on track to beat its target of helping one million families by 2020.

Youn, who grew up in suburban St. Paul, Minnesota, has no obvious ties to farming or Africa, but an “Innovating Social Change” conference at Kellogg piqued his interest. He traveled to the continent for an internship in 2005 and was profoundly influenced by the hunger he saw in the region. The experience sparked the idea for the One Acre Fund, which Youn developed more fully during an entrepreneurship class at Kellogg.

While still working toward his MBA, Youn launched a pilot project in Kenya and oversaw the work via phone calls. But he still lacked the funds he needed to realize the full potential of his idea. Then, shortly before graduation, Youn made a successful pitch to the board of the Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice at Kellogg, giving him the financial boost he needed to fully launch the One Acre Fund.

Youn’s passion inspires everyone around him, including University donors Christopher and Courtney Combe, who named their scholarship program after him in 2013. The Youn Impact Scholars are an elite group of Kellogg students and alumni who are passionate about social impact. Highly regarded for their intellect, passion and drive, these innovators draw upon their business skills to create positive change in the world.