Investment funds for agricultural as well as finance, investment promotion, etc.
Colleagues,
As part of the task force on this debate of innovative finance, I think the discussion has been good. I would like us to be less focused on the taxing approaches and more on how to leverage in additional private investment since the world has excess investment funds looking for a place to invest, thanks to the turmoil and doubt in the traditional stable country investments and the higher potential in emerging market agriculture. We can use our organizations, and hopefully additional funding, to help steer that investment through better governance, impact investment guidance and better steering of funding through value chains.
Calvin Miller
Senior Officer and Leader- Agribusiness and Finance Group
Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO),
www.fao.org/ag/ags/subjects/en/ruralfinance
www.ruralfinance.org
Calvin Miller
I agree the document is a useful report. There could be some more on the issue of small farmer overall competitiveness which goes beyond their lack of natural and financial resources, the less developed and often less reliable farmer groups and organizations and lack of economies of scale for both better market access and feasibility of investing in better technologies. It is then combination of factors that collectively pull them down.
I thought that in the point 3 and to some extent point 5 of the Summary and in the corresponding document text there is an over-appreciation of the status of farmer organizations. They have many problems of governance, of internal and external politics, etc. that seriously weaken many of them. It is not just that the world is "stacked" against them, which can be but is often not the case. I do agree with the point in 5 about inclusion.
I am not sure about the 2 hectare definition since it is not valid for some many places and does not address herders, mountain communities, etc.
Overall the other messages of the document are consistent with the information.
I look forward to further work in moving this from document into action.
Calvin Miller, Senior Officer Agribusiness and Finance, FAO