Publication: Key Steps to Improve Agribusiness Competitiveness, Part II: Research and Development, Logistics, and Marketing
Loading...
Published
2018-01
ISSN
Date
2018-09-06
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Agriculture is central to emerging market economies. In Africa it accounts for as much as 65 percent of employment and 32 percent of output. Globally, two-thirds of the world’s poor - some 750 million people - work in rural areas. But as economies expand and production shifts to manufacturing and services, agriculture’s share of employment, and gross domestic product (GDP) decreases. At the same time, the broader agribusiness industry - business activities performed from farm to fork - is playing a more important role in growth and development. Improved land rights, better regulation of input and output markets, and better access to seeds and fertilizer are all critical to this transition. In part II, the emphasis is on a shift of research and development (R and D) spending from the public sector to private enterprises in middle-income countries focused on market opportunities related to advanced technologies and knowledge transfers. And a new emphasis on agricultural marketing, logistics, and market data is helping to integrate small farms into agricultural value chains, with higher prices for their products, greater productivity growth, and more sustainable overall development.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Walton, Tom; Grishin, Vadim. 2018. Key Steps to Improve Agribusiness Competitiveness, Part II: Research and Development, Logistics, and Marketing. EMCompass,no. 50;. © International Finance Corporation. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/30376 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Banking on FinTech in Emerging Markets(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2022-01)Despite near-universal access to financial services in advanced economies, financial exclusion is stubbornly persistent in many emerging markets, leaving huge swaths of low-income populations unbanked or underbanked. FinTech companies, which apply innovative technologies to deliver such services in new ways, have begun to tap into the enormous unmet demand that this represents. These companies are starting to thrive in emerging markets, though regulatory issues, particularly weak consumer protection measures, remain to be resolved in many countries. If these can be overcome, and more progress toward universal access to digital infrastructure can be made, FinTechs will continue to scale and spread.Publication Financing Deep Tech(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10)Deep tech companies - those built on advances in biotechnology, robotics, electronics, artificial intelligence, and other advanced technologies—aim to solve complex social and environmental challenges. Today the majority of deep tech companies are being launched in developed countries, yet the solutions they can provide are applicable globally. Many of these solutions are especially critical to emerging markets, as the intractable challenges of climate, health, and connectivity, among other issues, disproportionately affect these nations. Addressing these challenges is a strategic priority for development finance institutions and governments worldwide, so financing deep tech companies and boosting deep tech ecosystems in order to deliver new solutions globally is a pressing matter. Doing so, however, requires substantial capital and carries a higher degree of risk than ordinary venture investments. This note examines the process of financing a deep tech company, including the benefits and drawbacks of currently available types of financing, and suggests examples of promising but not yet widespread alternatives.Publication Sustainability-Linked Finance(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2022-01)Sustainability-linked finance is designed to incentivize the borrower’s achievement of environmental, social, or governance targets through pricing incentives. Launched in 2017, it has now become the fastest-growing sustainable finance instrument, with over $809 billion issued to date in sustainability-linked loans and bonds. Yet these instruments are still nascent in emerging markets, which represent only 5 percent of total issuance to date. This note shares examples of recent sustainability-linked financing, including several involving IFC in various roles, to highlight how investors can utilize these new instruments in emerging markets and mitigate greenwashing risksPublication Enabling Private Investment in 5G Connectivity in Emerging Markets(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2021-04)This note proposes a high-level framework to assess challenges and policy options to enabling private sector-led investment in 5G connectivity in emerging markets. 5G is the latest mobile network technology and it has the potential to provide high-speed Internet connectivity and enable digital transformation across multiple sectors of an economy. The proposed framework leverages industry data to articulate the digital divide and benchmark the enabling environment for 5G connectivity in emerging markets. The note concludes with recommendations on policy options and business strategies, drawing from early experiences in advanced markets and major opportunities and challenges in emerging markets.Publication Artificial Intelligence(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2019-09)The global race to fund, develop, and acquire artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and start-ups is intensifying, with commercial uses for AI proliferating in advanced and emerging economies alike. AI can increase gross domestic product (GDP) growth in both advanced countries and emerging markets. In energy, AI can optimize power transmission. In healthcare, diagnosis and drug discovery will benefit enormously from AI. In education it can improve learning environments and learning outcomes and can better prepare youth for transition to the workplace. In manufacturing, AI can help design better products in terms of functionality, quality, and cost, and improve predictive maintenance. AI can help extend credit and financial services to those who lack them. The potential impact of AI on transportation and logistics goes far beyond automation and road safety to span the entire logistics chain. Yet with the exceptions of China and India, emerging markets have received only a modest share of global investment in this advanced technology, despite the fact that they may benefit more from AI implementation than advanced economies.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Key Steps to Improve Agribusiness Competitiveness, Part I(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2018-01)Agriculture is central to emerging market economies. In Africa it accounts for as much as 65 percent of employment and 32 percent of output. Globally, two-thirds of the world’s poor - some 750 million people - work in rural areas. But as economies expand and production shifts to manufacturing and services, agriculture’s share of employment and gross domestic product (GDP) decreases. At the same time, the broader agribusiness industry - business activities performed from farm to fork - is playing a more important role in growth and development. In part I, the emphasis is on improved land rights, better regulation of input and output markets, and better access to seeds and fertilizer that are all critical to this transition.Publication Agribusiness Indicators : Kenya(Washington, DC, 2013-01)The importance of agriculture in the economies of sub-Saharan African countries cannot be overemphasized. With agriculture accounting for about 65 percent of the region's employment and 75 percent of its domestic trade, significant progress in reducing hunger and poverty across the region depends on the development and transformation of the agricultural sector. Transforming agriculture from largely a subsistence enterprise to a profitable commercial venture is the prerequisite and driving force for accelerated development and sustainable economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa. The rationale behind the development of agribusiness indicators (ABIs) is to construct indicators for specific factors to support successful, effective private sector involvement in agriculture. The indicators can be used to benchmark and monitor performance in the agricultural sector over time and across countries. The resulting information can provoke knowledge flows and meaningful dialogue among policy makers, government officials, donors, private sector actors, as well as other stakeholders in the agricultural sector. This study is predicated on the fact that agriculture is the backbone of the economies of most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including Kenya. The ultimate aim is to stimulate debate and dialogue among policy makers in specific African countries to engender change and reform in areas where investment is needed to leverage agribusiness and economic development. This study relied heavily on an extensive secondary data collection and literature review, supplemented by informal surveys to solicit information from a broad spectrum of stakeholders and actors in Kenya's agricultural sector. The review and interviews focused on the factors that the agribusiness indicators team determined to be the most critical for agribusiness development across sub-Saharan Africa, based on extensive scoping missions in three pilot countries (Ghana, Ethiopia, and Mozambique). This report is organized into following chapters: chapter one gives introduction; chapter two presents ABI methodology; chapter three presents findings on the success factors and indicators; and chapter four gives concluding remarks.Publication Responding to Higher and More Volatile World Food Prices(Washington, DC, 2012-05)Following the world food price spike in 2008 and again in 2011, there has been increased attention on better understanding the drivers of food prices, their impacts on the poor, and policy response options. This paper provides a simple model that closely simulates actual historical food price behavior around which the analysis of the drivers of food price levels, volatility, and the associated response options is derived. Future food prices are likely to remain higher than pre-2007 levels and recent price uncertainty is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Accelerated use of food crops for industrial purposes (biofuels) continues to offset the slowing population growth effect on food demand. World food stocks remain at relatively low levels where the likelihood of price spikes is higher. Production gains may be harder to achieve in the future than in the past, with more limited space for area expansion, declining yield growth, and increases in weather variability. Suggested responses to reduce average food price levels are to (i) raise food crop yields, and their resilience, as the single most important action needed for an enduring solution to global food security; (ii) improve the rural investment climate to induce a private sector supply response; (iii) facilitate land markets to expand planted food crop areas and strengthen property rights to improve the use of existing cropped areas; (iv) better use price risk management tools; and (v) increase the responsiveness of the food system to price increases through better integrating markets to ensure world price signals reach more producers to induce a supply response. To reduce world food price volatility, suggested responses are to: (1) develop weather-tolerant crop varieties to reduce food production shocks; (2) improve management of food-grain stock purchases and releases to reduce, rather than amplify, local and world food price volatility; (3) shift to market-based biofuels policies (make biofuels mandates more flexible); (4) open trade across all markets to diversify short-term production shocks dissipating the associated price effects; and (5) improve market transparency to reduce market uncertainty and the associated large price corrections following revisions to market information (production, stocks, and trade). Suggested measures to reduce the negative impact of price shocks on food security are: (a) reduce taxes and tariffs (in some cases) to lower domestic prices, (b) short-term food and cash transfers to preserve purchasing power, and (c) support for agricultural production to try to prevent a next season shortfall that could add to local price increases.Publication Nicaragua : Promoting Competitiveness and Stimulating Broad-based Growth in Agriculture(Washington, DC, 2002-10)The report argues that Nicaragua's best hope for sustained growth, and poverty reduction, probably lies with agricultural exports, which have the potential to gain from opportunities in world markets. Despite the small share of farmland devoted to the production of exports (25 percent of harvested area), the total trade of agricultural goods (including the value of both imports, and exports) accounted for almost eighty five percent of agricultural GDP in 1998. This is high relative to several countries in the area. But most likely, the most promising is the export performance of non-traditional agricultural products. The report accords greatest emphasis to improving competitiveness, and recommends giving this goal highest priority. To this end, four areas for action to improve competitiveness have bee identified: modernizing agribusiness; promoting agricultural exports; improving the effectiveness of public spending; and, strengthening public-private partnerships. These measures will also have to be complemented by sustained, ongoing efforts to improve factor market efficiency, suggesting improvements to facilitate rural finance; boost access to technology, improve land productivity, and, raise labor market's human capital. In addition, the significant risks faced by the country's agricultural sector - natural disasters and economic shocks - call for improved agricultural risk management, through innovative insurance products, and credit services, as well as improved warning systems to forecast weather related disasters.Publication Arab Republic of Egypt - Toward Agricultural Competitiveness in the 21st Century : An Agricultural Export-Oriented Strategy(Washington, DC, 2001-12-21)The report proposes key elements for an agricultural export-oriented strategy in Egypt, that would build on the achievements of the agricultural strategy during the 1990s. Substantial improvements in the country's macroeconomic environment, following policy reforms - though necessary - have not been sufficient to improve agricultural export performance. Overall, while Egyptian agricultural production increased during the 90s, agricultural exports remained low, and, the fact that both Egyptian production, and world market trends are substantially less volatile, is a first indicator of the potential to increase agricultural exports. The proposed agricultural export strategy starts with an analysis of the agricultural export potential in the country, which includes a review on the overall agricultural export performance; an analysis of the incentive framework in agriculture, including estimates of the current nominal, and effective protection rates of key imports, and exports, and, the estimated effects of alternative agricultural, and trade policy reform scenarios, on the returns to farming in alternative crops. This analysis identifies two agricultural sub-sectors - cotton and horticultural crops - from which Egypt, contingent on policy reforms, could benefit from potentially substantial comparative advantages in trade. Based on the recognition that export promotion requires a mix of sector-wide, and sub-sector specific reforms, the rational focus of the report was to identify the main impediments of export growth in the cotton, and horticultural sectors. The report further offers suggestions to phasing in reforms, so that policies increasing farming returns in exports, precede those that will decrease (absolute) returns in competing crops.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Doing Business 2014 : Understanding Regulations for Small and Medium-Size Enterprises(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2013-10-28)Eleventh in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 185 economies, Doing Business 2014 measures regulations affecting 11 areas of everyday business activity: Starting a business, Dealing with construction permits, Getting electricity, Registering property, Getting credit, Protecting investors, Paying taxes, Trading across borders, Enforcing contracts, Closing a business, Employing workers. The report updates all indicators as of June 1, 2013, ranks economies on their overall “ease of doing business”, and analyzes reforms to business regulation – identifying which economies are strengthening their business environment the most. The Doing Business reports illustrate how reforms in business regulations are being used to analyze economic outcomes for domestic entrepreneurs and for the wider economy. Doing Business is a flagship product by the World Bank and IFC that garners worldwide attention on regulatory barriers to entrepreneurship. More than 60 economies use the Doing Business indicators to shape reform agendas and monitor improvements on the ground. In addition, the Doing Business data has generated over 870 articles in peer-reviewed academic journals since its inception.Publication World Development Report 2011(World Bank, 2011)The 2011 World development report looks across disciplines and experiences drawn from around the world to offer some ideas and practical recommendations on how to move beyond conflict and fragility and secure development. The key messages are important for all countries-low, middle, and high income-as well as for regional and global institutions: first, institutional legitimacy is the key to stability. When state institutions do not adequately protect citizens, guard against corruption, or provide access to justice; when markets do not provide job opportunities; or when communities have lost social cohesion-the likelihood of violent conflict increases. Second, investing in citizen security, justice, and jobs is essential to reducing violence. But there are major structural gaps in our collective capabilities to support these areas. Third, confronting this challenge effectively means that institutions need to change. International agencies and partners from other countries must adapt procedures so they can respond with agility and speed, a longer-term perspective, and greater staying power. Fourth, need to adopt a layered approach. Some problems can be addressed at the country level, but others need to be addressed at a regional level, such as developing markets that integrate insecure areas and pooling resources for building capacity Fifth, in adopting these approaches, need to be aware that the global landscape is changing. Regional institutions and middle income countries are playing a larger role. This means should pay more attention to south-south and south-north exchanges, and to the recent transition experiences of middle income countries.