Eugenia Serova
Eugenia Serova currently is a professor and a director on agrarian policy at the Scientific University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow. She was the first coordinator for FAO’s Strategic Objective 4 – Enable inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems. Later she was a director of the FAO Liaison office for Russia. Prior to joining FAO’s Investment Centre in September 2007, she served as adviser to the Russian Federation’s Minister of Agriculture. Since 1994, she has been team leader at the Institute for Economy in Transition (the Gaidar Institute), President of the Analytical Centre on Agrifood Economics, and acting professor and chair of agricultural economics at Moscow Higher School of Economics. Before 1991, she worked at the All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences and its institutes. Her main expertise is in agricultural economics, agrifood policy and trade, farm cooperatives, land tenure and the Russian Federation’s agrarian reform. She has extensive experience in carrying out and coordinating research on Russian agriculture, and in obtaining results in policy processes. She has participated in the work of many international organizations, including the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Her involvement in policy formulation for the Russian Federation’s agriculture sector included participation in drafting several laws and other pieces of legislation. She has been an advisor in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Jamaica and other countries. She holds a Ph.D. and a Doctorate of Economics from Moscow State University.

David Neven (Responsible Officer for this platform)
David Neven is a Senior Economist at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). In this position, he is the Senior Program Advisor under FAO’s strategic program on inclusive and efficient food systems. He also leads the Sustainable Markets, Agribusinesses, and Rural Transformations (SMART) Team in the Agricultural Development Economics Division (ESA). In these roles, he coordinates conceptual development and provides technical guidance in the area of food systems development in a structural transformation context. Previously a field practitioner for the Belgian government, a visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University, and senior consultant with a leading US consulting firm, he has 20 years of research, teaching, management, new-business development, and consulting experience. David holds advanced degrees in agricultural engineering, business administration, and agricultural economics.

Carlos A. da Silva
Carlos A. da Silva is a former Senior Agribusiness Economist  and member of the management team of the Rural Infrastructure and Agro-Industries Division of FAO, in Rome (2004 - 2015).  He is presently working as an independent agribusiness development consultant, with recent assignments with the Word Bank and FAO. Between 1981 and 2004, and again from 2016 to 2017, he was a full professor of agro-industrial economics and management at the Federal University of Viçosa, one of Brazil’s leading agricultural universities. At FAO he led the formulation and implementation of several agribusiness development projects, covering countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He also conceptualized and developed FAO’s Web-based Contract Farming Resource Centre. He has published extensively on contract farming, agro-industrial project preparation and evaluation, agro-industrial development, decision support systems for agribusiness and agricultural marketing. He is the lead editor and co-author of the flagship books “Agro-industries for development", published by CAB International and FAO in 2009, and "Contract farming for inclusive market access", published by FAO in 2014. An economist by training, he holds Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in agricultural economics from Michigan State University, United States of America.

Florence Tartanac
Florence Tartanac is a Senior Officer and Group Leader of the Market Linkages and Value Chain Group in the Nutrition and Food Systems Division of FAO in Rome. Her areas of expertise are development of small and medium-sized agro-industries, management of farmers’ organizations, development of business partnerships and value chains, and voluntary standards and geographical indications. She joined FAO in 2001 and was posted at the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean before coming to Rome in 2005. Before FAO, she worked for ten years in Guatemala, as part of France’s cooperation with the Institute of Nutrition for Central America and Panama (INCAP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Her academic background is in food engineering and she has a Ph.D. in economic geography from Paris University.