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Badly Needed, Hard to Deliver: The Challenges of Selling Drought Insurance to African Farmers
Millions of poor farmers in Africa can't move beyond subsistence levels because of droughts and other weather disasters. Insuring farmers against these risks is key to helping build their resilience to climate shocks. But providing this insurance – while making a profit – is no easy matter. Jim Hight explores the challenges in discussing WorldCover, a drought insurance provider that's gaining traction in Africa.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Finance
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Smallholders as Customers, Not Pupils: Making the Case for Good Agricultural Practices
Good agricultural practices offer smallholders the promise of improved food safety, food quality and environmental stewardship. But they also bring the risks of implementing costly new methods and standards. To overcome farmers' reluctance to adopt these practices, Ben Fowler of MarketShare Associates and Clara Yoon at MEDA write that agricultural organizations should adopt a customer-centric approach – treating smallholders as customers rather than beneficiaries of know-how.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship
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Five Ways the Private Sector Can Align with the Sustainable Development Goals
How can the private sector advance the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and what’s the best way to measure the success of these efforts? Those questions were among the topics explored at the recent Sustainability and Development Conference at the University of Michigan. Yaquta Kanchwala Fatehi and Dana Gorodetsky at the William Davidson Institute attended the event, and they share some essential insights on the private sector’s role in supporting the SDGs.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Impact Assessment
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‘Pilots Never Fail, Pilots Never Scale’: Why the Global Development Community Needs a More Realistic Approach to Reaching Billions
We live in an era that calls for large-scale social and environmental transformation – but our standard approaches aren't working. As Lennart Woltering at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center sees it, we need larger systems change. He shares a new paper that argues that agricultural development should stop focusing narrowly on making an impact through specific projects, and instead transform the underlying system so new technologies can be used by millions.
- Categories
- Agriculture
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The Next Big Thing for Energy Access in India? Service-Based Models for Productive-Use Appliances in Agriculture
The global off-grid solar industry has grown exponentially, driven largely by sales or leasing of small appliances enabled by the pay-as-you-go business model. But according to Lanvin Concessao at Oorja Development Solutions, the market is now shifting towards larger income-generating appliances used in small businesses and farms. He explores the impact these appliances can have in India, and how they can drive the irrigation and cold storage sectors' transition to solar energy.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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Designing for Social Good, Not ‘Feel Good’
Designing products for multinational corporations and their affluent target markets is very different from designing products for low-income, rural consumers. Jordan Westerberg, industrial designer with social venture development firm Factor[e], has worked in both of these worlds. He discusses a recent project that redesigned a solar conduction dryer for Indian farmers, and cautions against being drawn to simplistic, feel-good products when designing for social impact.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Surviving the ‘Valley of Death’: A New Funding Database Aims to Help Agtech Companies Avoid Early-Stage Failure
Population growth and climate change are bringing extraordinary challenges to the agriculture sector in emerging markets. But though small- and medium-sized enterprises are essential to addressing these issues, they remain underfunded – particularly in the period before they become profitable (often referred to as the ‘‘Valley of Death’’). Aarno Keijzer at NpM explores these challenges, and presents a free database that NpM has compiled, highlighting funds that can help early-stage agriculture companies bridge this financial gap.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
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Bringing Biogas to Billions: Why PAYGO Could be the Key to Scaling the Industry
Small scale biogas digesters (biodigesters) convert animal manure into biogas for clean cooking and high-quality organic fertilizer. The technology is hardly new – in fact, it's been around for 150 years. But for farmers to benefit on a mass scale, companies will need to lean on new technology and innovative business models, writes Ben Jeffreys, CEO of ATEC* Biodigesters International. That means learning the lessons of the off-grid solar industry and devising new pay-as-you-go models to enable the inclusion of low-income customers.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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