Leveraging Private Sector Investments to reach Zero Hunger

13 September 2018, Washington, DC - Representatives from major US corporations joined FAO North America and the Alliance to End Hunger for a roundtable discussion on how to leverage private sector investment in agricultural value chains to benefit smallholders and contribute to zero hunger. Margaret Zeigler, Executive Director of the Global Harvest Initiative, moderated the discussion.

Vimlendra Sharan, Director of FAO North America, opened the conversation by highlighting the continuing increase in global hunger levels and the importance of smallholder farmers, which produce 70-80 per cent of the food produced in Asia and Africa. He noted that private sector investments can increase smallholder farmer’s competitiveness.

Jennifer Billings, Agriculture Development Leader at Corteva Agriscience™, the agricultural division of the newly formed DowDuPont, accentuated the need for public and private partnerships to achieve food security. She highlighted Corteva’s partnership with the Government of Ethiopia, USAID and ACDI/ VOCA (2013-18), which increased the productivity of 250,000 smallholder farmers by 300 per cent and annual income by USD$1,500.

Geoff Andersen, Director of Regional Agricultural Strategic Planning for John Deere, underscored the strong potential for making farmers sustainable and profitable. He emphasized the importance of creating the right ecosystem to bring agricultural mechanization, such as policy incentives and infrastructure. One such example of public-private partnership includes John Deere’s corporation with the Nigerian Ministry of Food and Agriculture to procure 10,000 tractors and assemble a local facility.

John O’Connor, Senior Manager of Project Design & Implementation at Land O’Lakes, Inc. shared the corporation’s increasing work in building smallholder farmers resilience to shocks. This includes proving training programs in partnership with USAID to help smallholder farmers identify fall armyworms.

The speakers stressed the high return of investment from agriculture, but noted the need for collective investments in training, infrastructure, finance, and technology across the complete agricultural value chain.