Innovations in agricultural markets amid climate change: Takeaways from Cracking the Nut 2015

The annual conference is helping people develop new working relationships to support agricultural and rural markets.

The Cracking the Nut conference has been held annually since 2011, bringing together a globally diverse and wide range of stakeholders to explore ways to develop the world’s rural and agricultural markets. This year’s focus was on ‘expanding rural and agricultural markets amid climate change’. Held in Lusaka, Zambia from 2-3 March, the workshops, speeches and plenaries were held across three tracks: strengthening rural and agricultural infrastructure; expanding financial access to rural areas; and improving agricultural production.

Big data, new possibilities

As a newbie to nut cracking, I was impressed by the content. Each track provided fresh insights. Under infrastructure, I was particularly impressed by USAID's Financing Ghanaian Agriculture Project (USAID-FinGAP). The programme is using several approaches to bridge the gap between agribusinesses that feel there is no funding available for them and financiers who can’t see bankable projects ‒ including providing challenge grants for financial institutes to invest into agriculture and relevant performance based contracts for business development services. However it was USAID’s new Agricultural Investment Opportunities Map that caught my eye. This online tool maps out rice, maize and soy production in Ghana, the location of relevant infrastructure and supporting businesses (e.g. warehouses), and can provide production and infrastructure projections for the future based on past trends. It is already a valuable tool for investors to initially assess the business case of proposed investments in agribusinesses. Promisingly, USAID is planning to expand the mapping platform to its work in South America. The sustainability of the mapping is unclear, and over the coming years USAID will be looking at how to do this, potentially through embedding the platform with the government or seeking commercial partners. The accuracy of the tool has also not been thoroughly tested (rather errors are fixed after they are spotted by users). Despite this, the map is an exciting use of 'big data' in development work.

Partnerships

The other tracks presented interesting new insights. The financial services track included a great presentation by two development programmes: DFID and Sida funded Musika, and the DFID funded Financial Services Development Zambia. The two programmes introduced work they were doing together on agricultural finance, including developing a market for accessible, affordable weather insurance. The joint intervention also collaborated with MicroEnsure (a leader in microinsurance provision in Africa and Asia) to develop a life and weather insurance product in conjunction with NWK Agriservices (a leading agribusiness in Zambia). The intervention is still in its early stages but the numbers are favourable. Further signs of market change can be seen with MicroEnsure diversifying its product offering to rural Zambians through other agribusinesses.

Not only did the financial services session show a promising way to make weather-based index insurance accessible to farmers (a need that has been tried with limited success by other actors in other contexts), it also showcased an example of agricultural and financial M4P (Making Markets Work for the Poor) programmes working together that could be replicated in other countries.

Climate-smart innovation

Climate change was a cross-cutting theme at the conference. A presentation by GRM on lessons from Abu Dhabi in desert farming included innovative water-saving technologies, a soil typology database and new market-based credit schemes. The risks climate change have already started to bring to farmers across Africa was clearly articulated, and it was fitting that the final plenary brought together a panel of experts from Catholic Relief Services, Musika, Opportunity International, and Chemonics International, to focus on 'scaling climate-smart innovation to overcome the effects of climate change'. This panel addressed the problems farmers are facing, successful ways of dealing with climate change impacts and what approaches could be scaled up. This included watershed/landscape management, weather-based index insurance, the adopting of drought resistant crops and improved climate-related knowledge provision through extension services.

Ideas for future events

The conference ‒ in as much as it brought together people to develop new working relations and learn about ways to support agricultural and rural markets ‒ should be seen as a success. I have three suggestions for the future.

First, there was little discussion among development practitioners on sustainability i.e. how practitioners are trying to ensure the impacts of their work will remain after they go. Many of the participants were market actors and this would be less relevant for them, but more discussion on practitioner exit strategies and the value of a facilitation approach and working with market actor incentives would have been good.

Second, the conference seemed to focus on successes. These are valuable sources of learning and inspiration, but more discussion on the challenges organisations face and debates over key issues between participants would have been useful.

Third, a question for many conferences is how can they raise their ambitions and then take forward their specific agenda. This is especially relevant for Connexus, which seems to have already mastered the core work of carrying out conferences and the ability to bring many people and organisations to the table.

Next year it would be great to hear i) how organisations are working together based on their learning and relationships developed at Cracking the Nut (I was struck by how many different organisations are doing fairly similar work to each other), and ii) evidence that the discussions at Cracking the Nut were not just wise words shared among the converted, but used as part of an advocacy strategy to reach and persuade new audiences. 

Ashley manages the BEAM Exchange's practitioner learning and development activities.