(To Reply to this Discussion Summary, please see the original post here: http://microlinks.kdid.org/speakers-corner-38-leveraging-financial-services-agriculture-led-food-security/summary-day-1-discuss)
Participants,
Thank you all so much for your contributions to our lively first day of this online forum! For those of you in other time zones, we encourage you to continue engaging and join in with your feedback to this message and others before it.
The discussion truly benefited from the insights and experiences shared by so many practitioners-- representing various backgrounds, institutions and organization, with a range and depth of different country context and experiences. Contributions and examples cited included issues and initiatives in Ghana, India, Mexico, Iraq, Guatemala, Malawi, Kenya and more. Many salient points and issues were raised to create a broad foundation for the conversations that will continue over the next couple of days. Many have weighed in on these challenging issues and shared lessons and priorities for how we might further maximize the impact and ways in which financial services can be targeted across various points in the agriculture sector to leverage impact and improve the effectiveness of agricultural development.
Towards the end of our discussion today and at various points we began to look at what this means for the resource poor and will continue further in the coming days with the links to what this means for agriculture-led food security, a very current and timely issue. If you haven’t had a chance yet, we encourage you to explore the links on the right hand side, especially the FeedtheFuture.gov site which includes an 8 page summary document, explaining the approach of this new USG initiative. The Rural and Agriculture Financing for Food Security report is a great segway into tomorrow as well.
In summary we heard lots of perspectives touching on various dimensions of the issues from critical entry points within agriculture development including credit for inputs (fertilizer, equipment, seeds, etc), labor, value-added enterprises, post-harvest facilities, transportation, and marketing; to the spectrum of financial service services and types of provision needed including credit, savings and various insurance and risk minimizing solutions. Also constraints and opportunities were raised about implementation; the investments needed in human capital and skills; bureaucracy, timelines and barriers to participation by resource poor producers; the most appropriate roles and interventions of different actors and institutions; high costs, the lack of collateral and security (including secure land tenure); and the need to provide innovative products, build and extend local best practices and to scale-up. The need to support governments role in strengthening agriculture research institutions for provision of improved seed/breeds etc and also putting in place policies that encourage an enabling environment for private investments that regulate lending and finance institutions' work as well as agricultural development as a whole. Frameworks for discussion were raised for looking at risk management in financial services delivery for agricultural development. Issues of seasonality in agricultural cycles and implications for loan schedules, rates and terms arose and many more.
We now pass the facilitator torch to our colleague Rashmi Ekka who will guide us through Day 2! Topics and comments from Day 1 remain open for you to comment on if you were not able to do so yet or have additional input you want to share.
Again, for those in other time zones, we look forward to your contributions to these first topics and welcome your input!
Best regards,
Beverly McIntyre and Meaghan Murphy
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