Global food security experts share ideas at a panel. Photo credit: @JashDillon via Twitter. 

Advancing global food security through science, trade and business was the theme of this year’s event and there were several panel discussions featuring a diverse cast: academics and scientists; CEOs of start-up companies and nonprofits; and government officials. If you want, you can watch a webcast of the entire event here.

There were too many ideas and discussions to comprehensively document in this post, but one overarching theme was the power and vitality of innovation in addressing global hunger. Throughout the day, different speakers addressed the need to breathe creativity into one of the world’s most intractable problems. Fortunately, the rapid advances in technology and the sciences offer unprecedented opportunities to alleviate hunger and extreme poverty. Most of us can agree that the current model of global food production and distribution is not working if 870 million people are undernourished. Below are some exciting examples of innovation in the agriculture and food security world:

Digital Green: this India-based start-up harnesses the power of social media by allowing farmers to share best practices with one another. Groups are organized by Digital Green and watch instructional videos using a battery-powered projector. Over 130,000 smallholder farmers (70% women) have received agricultural extension training through their model in India, Ethiopia and Ghana. Recently, the organization launched “Farmerbook”, a Facebook-style platform that allows farmers to post videos, track each other’s progress, and get answers to questions.

Modern Meadow: Straight out of a science fiction novel, Modern Meadow is transforming the future market for meat production and animal products like leather. In response to the heavy environmental toll of consuming burgers and bacon, Modern Meadow is using tissue engineering to culture meat and leather without having to raise, slaughter or transport animals.

African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition, and Development (AJFAND): Based in Kenya, the AJFAND was founded by Dr. Ruth Oniang’o, who had a vision for an online peer reviewed journal to help budding African scientists publish their work and share findings on a global stage. Now her dream is a reality and this quarterly journal shares practice insight into issues that benefit farmers and the agriculture community. Recent papers look into the shelf-life of tilapia caught in Lake Malawi and the benefits and challenges of growing bananas in the highlands of Uganda.

Next year’s event could be improved by including farmers or farmer organizations during panel discussions to address their unique constraints and challenges in a way that business and science can understand. Not only is there a need to use a common language, there is a need to augment the productivity conversation to include other challenging issues such as postharvest loss and reducing risk for farmers. All in all, it was a great day of knowledge exchange and learning, and I’m excited for what will be discussed (and accomplished) in 2014.

Do more. Sign our petition to urge world leaders to make measurable commitments on chronic child malnutrition for 25 million children by 2016. 

Today, five African heads of state, four G8 development ministers, and over 100 private sector companies will meet in Cape Town, South Africa at the World Economic Forum on Africa to assess Grow Africa’s work in 2012, the partnership’s first full year in business.

First, here’s a little background. Two years ago, the African Union Commission, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) agency, and the World Economic Forum combined forces to create a new partnership, Grow Africa, which aims to reduce poverty by accelerating private sector investment in African agriculture. The partnership is led by the organizations previously listed, and includes eight member countries[1] and various stakeholders such as host governments, companies involved in investment, civil society, research institutions, and farmer organizations.

Here at ONE, we’re taking this opportunity to weigh in on Grow Africa’s first annual report. Overall, the initiative made significant progress last year, especially given the small size of its team. ONE hopes for further and more robust reporting in the coming years so the partnership can demonstrate its value and defend its model. Annual reporting gives Grow Africa an opportunity to demonstrate lessons learned over the past year and what challenges lay ahead. Here are the headlines:

- 97 commitments from 62 companies, of which 39 based are in Africa

- More than $60 million invested in activities that incorporate smallholder farmers

- Approximately 270,000 metric tons of commodities sourced within partner countries

- Equivalent of around $300 million in sales from these farmers

- Almost 800,000 smallholders reached with a mix of training, sourcing, and service provision

Obviously, there is a lot to commend here. Thousands of smallholders are being incorporated into commercial food supply chains where they’re growing more food and generating more income for their families. If Grow Africa adds further measures to increase transparency and expand reporting of poverty reduction indicators, the partnership could change the game for farmers and businesses.

For more information on Grow Africa’s report and ONE’s analysis, check out this policy brief.

When I lived in New York, people were always talking about the latest new restaurant or food truck. Were you able to get reservations? Did you have time to wait in that line that spanned half a block? In the world of private investment in African agriculture, the hottest topic is public-private partnerships like the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. (For more information on the New Alliance itself, take a look at our previous posts here and here.)

Starting tomorrow afternoon in Cape Town, South Africa, the New Alliance Leadership Council will be meeting to discuss the initiative’s progress and key issues to address. In attendance will be Justine Greening, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development, Josette Sheeran of the World Economic Forum, President Kikwete of Tanzania, Prime Minister Dessalegn of Ethiopia, and Dr. Zuma of the African Union among others. To say the least, it will be a room full of movers and shakers.

Over the past year, six countries (Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania, Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mozambique) have formally joined the New Alliance. The question this post raises is: how do other countries join the club, and more importantly, what should be the requirements for membership?

At the meetings in Cape Town, the Leadership Council is planning to announce the expansion of four additional countries: Benin, Malawi, Nigeria, and Senegal. We list below some ideas for what to consider when adding a country to the “club”, and how the four new countries stack up.

Reward “agricultural stars” and good performers. The New Alliance’s likelihood of success will depend in large part to the health of the existing agriculture sector and the amount of political leadership that supports it. Prime Minister Dessaglen from Ethiopia and Tanzania’s President Kikwete have been emphatic champions of agriculture. Ethiopia’s economic growth and poverty reduction through increased agricultural productivity is a modern miracle; while Tanzania’s innovative thinking sparked the SAGCOT Centre, a public-private partnership that’s connecting smallholder farmers to large buyers of crops.

Political leadership in Malawi and Senegal have been highly supportive of agricultural growth – ONE’s report on government spending shows both countries spent close to or over the Maputo commitment, through which governments pledged to spend at least 10% of their budgets on agriculture. On the other hand, Nigeria and Benin haven’t shown as much leadership on domestic expenditure – Nigeria and Benin spent 1.7% and 2.3% of their budgets on agriculture, respectively. Nigeria’s recent launch of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) is a good sign, however more public investment will be needed to ensure a genuine transformation.

Support countries with existing agriculture plans. To get anything done, you need a solid plan, right? For a lot of African countries, government officials, with input from farmers and private companies, put together agriculture investment plans through a process called CAADP. These plans have been vetted and costed by independent reviewers and represent a consensus view of how to transform agriculture growth into prosperity for poor farmers. Any country that gets added to the New Alliance should have a finished CAADP plan in place. Fortunately, all four new countries have finished plans and some plans are already in the implementation phase.

Prioritize countries that prioritize nutrition. With the average stunting rate for children under five in Sub-Saharan Africa at 40%, more investment needs to be directed to countries that demonstrate their commitment to tackling malnutrition. Within the four new countries’ CAADP plans, each one includes a strong focus on nutrition with three of the four plans having measurable nutrition indicators. The New Alliance itself should commit to a nutrition goal to be measured along with its topline goal of lifting 50 million people out of poverty.

Now that we’ve taken a closer look at the four new countries, who should be next in line? Since political leadership and budget transparency are high priorities, countries such as Sierra Leone and Niger are qualified candidates – both countries assessed in ONE’s report have demonstrated strong commitment to agriculture. In March, Sierra Leone launched a Smallholder Commercialization Programme (SCP) through the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) and early results are promising. Niger, since 2003, has consistently met the Maputo commitments and is on its way to meeting the MDG goal of cutting poverty in half.

For the New Alliance to reach its goal of poverty reduction, more countries will need to join posthaste. But those countries must be poised to invest in agriculture and nutrition. We encourage the Leadership Council to consider our suggestions for adding new countries to the New Alliance – doing so will make membership worth the wait.

Dig deeper. Read Part 1 and Part 2 of our New Alliance Report.

Like a perfect glass of pinot noir, a lot of things in life require the right conditions in order to be successful. Here at ONE, we think the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, launched at last years’ G8 meeting at Camp David, has lots of potential, but needs the right set of growing conditions to flourish. However, the New Alliance is not without criticism, and some NGOs raise concerns that the initiative isn’t designed to help farmers lift themselves out of poverty.

Check out a brief describing what the New Alliance involves.

In our first post, we debunked common myths that only large US multinational companies were in the New Alliance. We found that there are sizable investments from African companies, many investments  led by African companies, and that many of these companies are small- and medium-size businesses. In this post, we will address concerns from some civil society organizations that the New Alliance is only designed to help big agribusinesses, not farmers.

Since the main component of the New Alliance is the planned investments companies are undertaking, we examined how these investments contribute to an environment where smallholder farmers can benefit from:

- Increased (and more consistent) incomes;
- Better health and nutrition;
- Economic empowerment of women

With the world’s population expected to increase to 9 billion by 2050, new sources of supply are needed, and 500 million smallholders represent huge potential. Traditionally, only large, estate farms provided crops for large agribusinesses. Today, smallholders, through training, access to credit, and better technology, can produce output that meets high-quality standards. The important thing to remember is that farmers need the co-investment (i.e. training, better seeds, etc.) to create the right conditions to thrive. 

After sifting through New Alliance investments, our findings reveal that agribusinesses intend to predominantly “source” or purchase crops and produce directly from farmers (see chart). In order to help farmers increase their yields, they’ll provide training, modern equipment, and hybrid seeds. This is promising news. Around 86 percent of all investments are targeting these issues of increasing productivity, which is a huge priority of other initiatives, namely the African-led Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Program, or CAADP.

However, other conditions need to be further addressed for the New Alliance to live to its full potential, namely targeting women farmers, including more nutrition investments, and addressing postharvest storage in order to safely capture increases in productivity. We address each condition below.

Investments need to directly target women and report back how they’re doing it. Only one investment, UCERB, a women’s producer organization, is explicitly targeted at women producers. UCERB is investing 20 percent of the total cost of the project to build a postharvest storage facility in Burkina Faso that can store 200 tons of rice. Some other investments include indirect benefits of wage employment, such as EBT-Trading Sarl, which is planning to build several farms (avg. size 125 acres) in Burkina Faso with rural youth and women benefiting from new jobs. Other investments may well benefit women – either directly or indirectly – but without clear reporting, it’s impossible to account for these benefits. Given the high proportion of women involved in small scale farming, the New Alliance should include more investments targeted at women, and better reporting across all investments.

Investments should help farmers not just grow more food, but more nutritious food. Only 7 percent of investments include a direct nutritional component, while an additional 14 percent of investments help farmers who grow fruits and vegetables. An example of a direct approach includes Guts Agro Industry, a company developing a chickpea-based, emergency food for children suffering from malnutrition in Ethiopia. In the future, the New Alliance should incorporate more of these nutritionally sensitive approaches in its planned investments.

Farmers need more support to storage their harvests. Farmers can lose up to 30 percent of their harvest during the storage process due to mold and unsafe storage conditions. Despite the importance of addressing this challenge, only 9 percent of investments include a postharvest storage component in their investment. While increasing productivity is vitally important, much more can be done to address how to preserve the excess food being gown. As the New Alliance expands, more investments should establish public-private partnerships with companies like GrainPro, which manufactures durable plastic bags that keep grain dry during storage.

Two big upcoming events will release updates to the New Alliance and represent opportunities to improve the initiative:

1. May 8-10^th: New Alliance Leadership Council meeting in Cape Town, South Africa;
2. June 8^th: Nutrition for Growth event, hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron in London

The UK government, which holds the 2013 G8 presidency, signaled that it wants the New Alliance work better for women farmers and improve its focus on nutrition. We applaud these efforts to develop a better varietal of the New Alliance, and ask the G8 leaders, African governments, and private sector companies to work with farmers to transform intentions into reality. That’s something we can all raise our glasses to.

There is quite possibly no other symbol representing economic growth and prosperity more than the modern entrepreneur. Names like Steve Jobs, Martha Stewart and Mark Zuckerberg ring in the public consciousness as entrepreneurial success stories. These rare individuals drive growth and create jobs, while taking on tremendous risk. All across the developing world there are entrepreneurs who not only absorb risk for themselves, but often for their families.

Smallholder farmers are the ultimate entrepreneurs. In order to feed their family and send their children to school, they must grow enough food to eat and have a surplus left over to sell on the market. If they don’t succeed, many are forced to go hungry or sell off precious assets such as livestock or land.

While credit is usually attributed to individual efforts, the spotlight rarely focuses on the favorable business environment – led by government – that allows entrepreneurs to mitigate risk. The World Bank’s Doing Business index (measures the overall ease of doing business) ranks the United States fourth in the world. While each country is unique, farmers in sub-Saharan Africa would all benefit from a more favorable agriculture investment climate. This idea is stressed in the new FAO report, The State of Food and Agriculture 2012. Here are the key takeaways:

1. Investing in agriculture is one of the best strategies for reducing poverty and hunger. The regions where public agriculture spending have stagnated or fallen are the same areas with high rates of hunger and poverty.

2. Farmers are by far the largest source of investment in agriculture. Despite the recent flurry of high-profile commitments in agriculture by donor governments, multinational organizations (e.g. The World Bank) and large domestic and international companies, farmers are the dominant investors on their farms. Their on-farm investment is more than three times than all of the other sources combined.

3. A favorable investment climate is indispensable. Farmers need access to finance and insurance against crop failure. They need secure property rights and good roads to transport their crops to markets. Unfortunately, this hasn’t always been achieved. Governments and large private companies need to be transparent in their dealings so that farmers (and the environment) can truly benefit from their investments. Open investment and interventions aimed at big problems (e.g. corruption, no rule of law, etc.) in the business environment will catalyze further investment from farmers.

4. Governments and donors need to make ‘smart’ investments. Not all investments are created equal. In fact, research has shown high returns for investments in public infrastructure (i.e. rural roads and education) and R & D; and poor returns on subsidies for inputs like fertilizer.

Clearly, entrepreneurs cannot do it alone – they need tools to help them succeed. Smallholder farmers are no different. As the world looks forward to 2013, governments, citizens and domestic and foreign investors must commit to creating an “enabling environment” for smallholder farmers to grow their way from poverty to prosperity.

Ask your senator to preserve the US funding that goes to fighting hunger in the world’s poorest places by calling his office now. Click here to get started. 

Back in May, at the G8 Camp David Summit, President Obama announced the birth of a new initiative targeted to promote global food security called the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (“New Alliance”). It’s a bold initiative that aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years. The New Alliance involves a lot of important players in the global agriculture world including large donor governments (e.g. the United States, Germany, etc.), African governments, and a host of private sector companies.

Companies in the Alliance have submitted “Letters of Intent” describing how they’re going to do business and improve the lives of smallholder farmers. As an example, the African Cashew Initiative is a public-private partnership that is working to create a better business environment for cashew processors and farmers. African processors collaborate with experts, such as TechnoServe, on how to expand operations and stay on top of changes in the market. The goal of this project is to create 5,500 new processing jobs and raise the incomes of 150,000 farmers.

Here at ONE, when we think of the New Alliance, we immediately think of this ambitious goal of lifting 50 million people out of poverty.  However, to others, the New Alliance remains a mystery, shrouded in confusion and misunderstanding. Some of the criticism of the initiative has been fueled by an assumption that it is dominated by large U.S. multinational companies and in particular by large seed and fertilizer companies. We decided to dig deeper and find out which companies are involved, where they’re based, what they intend to do, and how much money they’re planning to invest.

The results were striking, and will surprise the initiative’s critics. Without further ado, here are five things you probably didn’t know about the New Alliance:

1. Contrary to popular misperceptions, several large investments come from African companies. It is encouraging to see companies based in Tanzania[1] and Cote D’Ivoire[2] show sizeable investments.

2. Many of the projects are led by African-based companies. Although it’s not the most important number, knowing the number of projects remains helpful to see how many of them are being submitted by African-based companies. The graph shows the quantity of projects based on where companies are headquartered.

3. Companies are diverse in size – and include many small businesses. The companies were classified as a big business (Multinational, African or Non-African), small business (small-to-medium sized enterprises or “SME”), Public-Private Partnership (PPP), or Business Association (Association). Nearly half are either small or medium businesses, public-private partnerships, or business associations.

4. European investment is higher than that of the United States, but indeed a few companies have very large investments. Contrary to the criticism that the New Alliance is primarily U.S.-focused, our findings show that European companies are actually committing more dollars than U.S. ones. A few European multinationals, including Norway-based Yara and France-based Groupe MIMRAN are each single-handedly out-investing all of the US projects combined.[3]

5. United States investments are not dominated by one company. Although AGCO constitutes a significant portion, our findings have countered the notion that the New Alliance was a public relations creation of Cargill and other US MNCs. Cargill’s investment is just one tenth of one percent of total investments under the New Alliance and as you can see in the graph below, there are several small contributions from US companies.

Our findings show that, although not perfect, the New Alliance is comprised of a diverse group of companies – including many small businesses – which are trying to expand economic opportunities for farmers and their families. It’s high time to recognize the importance of this initiative and encourage the UK to expand and enhance the New Alliance by adding at least 12 new countries, and ensure current compacts have time-bound commitments. Being clear about the facts and encouraging more transparency from companies will demystify the New Alliance and improve its chances of success, which is music to our ears.