NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Agriculture

Guest Post: Harnessing and Harmonizing: Making Natural Resources and Markets Work for the Poor

Francisco Noguera — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:10:03 -0500

Guest blogger Lauren Withey is a research analyst working on the World Resources Report at the World Resources Institute. She is a contributing writer to the newly-released World Resources 2008 - Roots of Resilience: Growing the Wealth of the Poor.

By Lauren Withey

Sofia Begum never imagined that she would be running her own poultry business. In 2000, the former housewife from northern Bangladesh was struggling to make ends meet for her family. She and her husband, a fisherman, were too poor to send their children to school. Like most of the families around them, the couple relied heavily on the local wetland to provide the protein and income necessary to sustain their daily lives. But degradation to the wetland from agricultural pollution, sediment from deforestation upstream, and overfishing had taken its toll in recent years. Fish harvests had fallen dramatically and the communities reliant on the wetlands had few other economic opportunities to fall back on.

Fortunately for Sofia, a new effort was just beginning in the area that aimed to help her community develop alternative income sources while restoring the wetlands under community management. The Managing of Aquatic Ecosystems through Community Husbandry (MACH) program was funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and executed by four civil society organizations with the support of the Bangladeshi government.

Communities across northern Bangladesh created two types of groups to carry out this process: Resource Management Organizations (RMOs) designed and implemented wetland management plans to aid the wetlands' recovery, while Resource User Groups (RUGs) served as training and financing mechanisms to develop alternative income sources. Specialty vegetable farms, fruit orchards, livestock-rearing operations, energy and clothing businesses, small stores are just a few of the fruits of the RUG's efforts in MACH communities.

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Asiapro: A Thriving Self-help Enterprise

Joseph Bornstein — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:54:30 -0500

Self-help or self-reliance continues to be the basic philosophy underlying the country's social reform and poverty alleviation efforts. Self-sustaining businesses and livelihood ventures are encouraged, which led to the development of groups with self-help programs that require little (to no) assistance from the government. Asiapro Multi-purpose Cooperative is a notable sample.

Asiapro empowers what was previously an unorganized sector in RP: informal/ non-regular workers. Based on recent labor data, there are over 20 million workers in the informal labor sector in the country. Most of these workers are marginalized casual, contractual, seasonal, temporary, and non regular employees. Under the Asiapro model, workers from this rank organize themselves and form a self-employed workers cooperative.

Asiapro pioneered the concept of self-employed workers-cooperative by modifying and eliminating the disadvantages brought about by the current status of contractual, contingent and temporary relationships. It introduced the concept of transforming workers into "entrepreneurs," or more appropriately, "coopreneurs," having bonded together in a cooperative enterprise.

Continue reading.

Guest Post: Maya Nut Trees Make A Comeback in Central America

Francisco Noguera — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:19:26 -0500

Guest blogger Karen Bennett is a Research Program Coordinator at the World Resources Institute. Her current work focuses on mainstreaming an ecosystem services approach to assure ecosystems' capacity to provide humans with needed goods and services. She also provides support to projects in the People and Ecosystems Program.

In Central America, the Maya Nut is making it clear that trees are worth more standing than cut down. Trees are critical to the well being of forest inhabitants in Central America. Ironically though, many forest dependent communities find it pays more to cut trees down than to keep them standing. That's because timber can be used for firewood, building material, or sold internationally, and cleared land can generate income from agricultural products. Unfortunately, deforestation eliminates other ecosystem services that forests provide, such as climate regulation, soil retention, and water regulation. As current deforestation rates attest, many of these forest benefits have received little recognition.

That is starting to change, however, as local communities discover the financial potential of the forest's often overlooked services. For the past few years, 56 women in Ixlu, Guatemala, which is located on the border of the Maya Biosphere Reserve, have operated a business to market the Maya Nut, also known as the Breadnut or Ramón. Dried and roasted, the Maya Nut can taste like chocolate or coffee and can be used to make cereal, cookies, cakes and other foods.

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Karoo Fish Farm Set to Freeze Poverty

Joseph Bornstein — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:18:27 -0500

IN A massive swing from agriculture to aquaculture, the dusty Karoo will become the centre of a commercial fish-breeding initiative that is set to haul about 250 women out of unemployment and poverty.

The Camdeboo Satellite Aquaculture Project in Graaff- Reinet is the brainchild of a local company called Camdeboo Bream, and it is aimed at boosting the local economy and creating employment.

The Graaff-Reinet firm‘s objective is to become a leader in the breeding and supply of fish for the fresh and frozen markets, with up to 50 satellite farms situated in the area. It is being launched with an initial budget of R750000.

The species to be bred is the tilapia (bream), which is widely used in aquaculture systems.

The species has its evolutionary origin in the Zambezi River basin and has since spread southwards through most of the warmer regions of southern African, researchers say.

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Job: Director, Foundation & Corporate Relations, Root Capital

Rob Katz — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 07:35:34 -0500

Editor's Note: NextBillion and Acumen Fund ally Willy Foote dropped us a note - via Brian Trelstad - and asked us to circulate this opening. If you're interested in Root Capital, be sure to watch their excellent video, which features Willy himself on the guitar.

Position: Director, Foundation & Corporate Relations

Location: Cambridge, MA

Organization: Root Capital (formerly Ecologic Finance) is a nonprofit social enterprise that works at the critical nexus of international development and environmental stewardship. As a development finance institution, Root Capital provides affordable credit and financial education to environmentally, sustainable grassroots enterprises in the developing world.

Description: The Director of Foundation and Corporate Relations will manage Root Capital’s investor relations programs and working closely with and reporting directly to the Managing Director for Philanthropic Investments. Root Capital's strategic plan has established an ambitious fundraising program with an emphasis on building relationships with key partners including financial institutions, corporations, foundations, and high net-worth individuals. The goal is to increase RC's lending capital from $19 million in 2007 to over $57 million by 2011.

For more information, including instructions on how to apply, see the attached job description.

Growing Inclusive Markets and Creative Capitalism

Rob Katz — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:34:39 -0500

Two quick notes: First, the Growing Inclusive Markets Initiative at the UN Development Program formally launched their report called Creating Value for All. In it, you'll find some policy prescriptions, case studies, a strategy matrix and - perhaps most interesting - heat maps. Hat tip to PSD Blog's Ryan Hahn for finding and posting one of these heat maps (in this case, of cell phone penetration in South Africa.)

Of course, the data on this particular heat map are from 2000, which means they are likely from surveys conducted in 1998 or 1999. When looking at cell phone penetration - which has grown at breakneck rates over the past 10 years in developing countries like South Africa - the heat map is basically useless because it's so out of date. Not so with other basic infrastructure - running water, electricity, transportation, etc. - but don't expect these heat maps to solve all your market research needs.

Editor's note: Please see comment below for a correction to the previous paragraph.

Second, also via PSD Blog (this time, in an e-mail from PSD emeritus Pablo Halkyard) a blog called Creative Capitalism. Here you will find a number of notable economists debating Bill Gates' call for more socially responsible business practices. Reading it, you can't help but wonder where Milton Friedman would side in the debate. Actually, we probably already know, but still...

Anyway, big thanks to PSD Blog and to Sahba at UNDP for sending this solid content over.

Cash In Hand: Why Africans Are Banking On The Mobile Phone

Joseph Bornstein — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 08:02:21 -0500

For consumers in developed markets, using a mobile phone for banking services is a smart add-on to a bank's branch network. But to people in the developing world, the arrival of mobile banking - or m-banking - is potentially revolutionary.

If money is an economy's lifeblood, improving its circulation plays a critical role. Many Africans living in rural areas, for instance, rely on money sent home by members of their family who work in towns and cities. But getting that cash to a village that could be hundreds of miles away is a tricky business. In Kenya, for example, workers in urban areas hand wages over to bus drivers, who promise to stop off at the worker's home village en route to their destination.

Even those who do have a bank account - and they make up only a few per cent of Africa's 950 million population - are restricted in what they can do with their money because of the dearth of branches in rural areas.

But the dramatic growth in mobile phone use in Africa - phones now outnumber cash machines by several thousand to one - is paving the way for a new set of services that turn the humble handset into a banking tool with the potential to transform Africa's economy.

Paul on Paul: Hudnut Reviews 'Out of Poverty'

Rob Katz — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:11:00 -0500

By Paul Hudnut

OUT OF POVERTY:
What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail
Paul Polak
240 pages (Berrett-Koehler, 2008)

Until now, the social enterprise bookshelf contained mostly two types of books—studies of what works, and studies of what’s broken. David Bornstein’s How to Change the World, which chronicles the inspiring work of Ashoka Fellows, best represents the first type. The writings of Jeffrey Sachs, Hernando De Soto, and William Easterly fall into the second group, though each of these economists has a markedly different perspective on what’s broken and what should be done.

Paul Polak is helping to create a third genre by writing one of the first how-to social enterprise books: Out of Poverty, which draws on Polak’s 25 years of using entrepreneurial approaches to increase the income of the rural poor in Asia and Africa.

Polak has long believed that to have a major impact, global poverty alleviation efforts must focus on small-plot farmers. A recent World Bank report backs him up, noting that “three of every four poor people in developing countries live in rural areas … and most depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.” As Polak states in the book, “most of these extremely poor people … can earn much more money by finding ways to grow and sell high-value, labor-intensive crops”—and that by doing so, they can lift themselves out of poverty.

Food Price Inflation and the BoP

Manuel Bueno — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 06:29:41 -0500

Most of NextBillion's visitors have heard about the current jump in food prices. These higher prices have already triggered responses locally in the form of riots in countries such as Haiti, Egypt and Bangladesh. The OECD and FAO have recently issued a report predicting that food prices have moved permanently to higher levels compared with past prices (the Financial Times offered an advance of the study's highlights some time ago). Although the reasons for this trend are beyond the scope of this post I suggest readers who are interested read this article.

In this post, I would like to explore the likely effects of higher food prices on the budgets of Base of the Pyramid consumers. An argument widely heard these days is that such food rises at least might improve the plight of poor farmers in developing countries, however, a recent study (which due to lack of data available includes only 16 countries) from the World Bank claims otherwise.

Price increases have a negative effect on urban areas since they are net buyers. In most rural areas, the effects are negative too. The overall impact in rural households is negative since possible benefits depend not on what they produce, but on the net sale of these goods. Often rural households have to acquire other goods for which the price has risen too, so the increased income is more than offset by the other price rises.

Most poor people are net consumers of food, and not net producers.
The only exceptions might be rural Peruvians thanks to high maize prices and rural Vietnamese thanks to high rice prices (although the Vietnamese government has set restrictions on rice exports to keep national prices under control).

At any rate, in every country taken into account by the authors of the study, the poverty rate increases and people who were already poor are made even poorer by high food prices.

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Guest Post: Local Innovation And Enterprise - The L-RAMP Model

Derek Newberry — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:00:00 -0500

Guest blogger Arun Sharma is Scouting Lead for Innovations at the Lemelson Recognition and Mentoring Program (L-RAMP). He is also a writer for L-RAMP Blog, which explores trends in social enterprise, innovation, technology and poverty alleviation.

By Arun Sharma

Meet Dr. Venkata Krishnan, a retired veterinary medicine professor from Chennai who has developed numerous products for animal health and welfare. Recently, he came to us with an innovation for dairy cows: a way to detect bovine mastitis much before clinical symptoms of the disease significantly affect milk production.

Bovine mastitis is a bacterial disease which commonly affects dairy cows and through degraded and reduced milk production, has negative financial impacts on dairy farmers. By developing a simple and inexpensive kit for the early detection and treatment of bovine mastitis, Dr. Krishnan has provided an easy way for farmers to preserve the health of their cows and minimize financial losses from this disease.

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