1. Calestous Juma, Harvard University, USA
“Expanding the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in food processing, storage, and transportation.”
2. Ray Anderson, Interface Global, USA
“Aquaculture”
3. Rob Munro, USAID, Zambia
“There is a need for funding to go into stimulating private sector growth (production, input market development, output market development and improved enabling policy work), in my unbiased opinion, along the lines of what PROFIT does – but too much money into this sector can be dangerous. The pressure to ‘dump’ money, however well-meaning – into the private sector easily distorts market signals and suppresses private sector investment which over the long term is very damaging. So, there should be strategic but limited investment in private sector development projects and then the big money should go into ‘public goods’ that facilitate trade and investment. Better agricultural, commercially relevant research, grades and standards – strengthening standards laboratories and oversight bodies – road and rail infrastructure, rural power, agricultural higher education and so on. With these investments, the worst that can happen is nothing and the best that can happen is creating a better, more efficient environment into which the private sector can do what is does best – do business!”
See PART I to hear from Dave Andrews (USA), Dave Johnstone (Cameroon), and Pierre Castagnoli (Italy).
See Part II to hear from Paul Sinandja (Togo), Dov Pasternak (Niger), and Pascal Pulvery (France).
See Part III to hear from Christine McCulloch (UK), Hans R Herren (VA), and Amadou Niang (Mali).
See Part IV to hear from Michel Koos (Netherlands), Don Seville (USA), and Ron Gretlarson
See Part V to hear from Shahul Salim, Roger Leakey (Kenya), and Monty P Jones (Ghana)
What is your answer? Email me at Dnierenberg@Worldwatch.org or tweet your response to @WorldWatchAg
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
