AgriConnect: Farms, Firms, and Finance for Jobs

[Mufasa the poet]
My grandmother was no magician, but I’ve been told it was miraculous how she schooled and fed her children with no job. She did not pull a rabbit out of her hat. She was known to pull strings for her children. To my grandmother, anyone old enough to say, “I’m hungry,” was old enough to go to the farm. And I remember, we planted maize, veggies, beans, potatoes, even mangoes, avocados. You could have called them the fruits of our work. Farming was a passion rooted in our existence. Our house structure did not say high standard of living, but I’ll tell you right now, for fun, we climbed tall fruit trees and it was our standard of living. I watched a three-acre farm raise a banker, a pharmacist, an entrepreneur. And I’m not saying farming always bought enough. I’m saying it was pivotal when everything was tough. I learned people need people, and farms do not just feed people. They nourish communities, they feed dreams, they plant realities. I say agriculture, and it’s easy to think of food on the table. But when I table our needs, you will see agriculture has done way more for the people, held families more than hands, handed a future today, even to people who know nothing about plants, but some are paid for their plants. I’m talking drivers, engineers, policymakers, marketers, a chain of jobs, and you are free to think. Where I come from, and I want to say Kenya, but I can also say Africa, and still mean to say agriculture, is the backbone of our economy, the spine to food security. I want to say it has upheld us, but I can also say it has held us down, a crown on the heads of farmers who cannot be seen in a concrete city. But don’t we feel it when the prices are too high, when farmers are going through it? Isn’t it a survival all through it? Ain’t we affected by factors that affect a farmer? And yet it’s like we’re left farming in the hands of a past getting older and older. But age is not what you lose when you let agriculture be an aging sector, when the world is peeling and when it takes extra skin to take care of your kin. The hunger of those who lack something to eat will not let us sleep in peace. And it’s not just mothers. Everyone pays when the youth cannot find a job that pays. Tomorrow is a dream. And agriculture can close the distance between today and a vision. But if only we do something about a sector that has been deemed less appealing to deal in, if only we induce young minds to come into a venture that needs the adventure of innovation, creativity, high energy. I close my eyes. And for millions of young people at the end of a corner, I see agriculture as a way, a chance, a shot to make it, to make it out, to make something of themselves, to lead self, to lead for all our sake. So, what are we waiting for?

[Video ends]

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Indeed. What are we waiting for? Yes. That was quite something. Thank you, Mufasa. Thank you so very much for giving us a glimpse into the lives of farmers in Africa. Firstly, I must say it’s so good, it’s so lovely to see a packed house for the flagship event, AgriConnect initiative right here at the Annual Meetings. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2025 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and the IMF. I’m Tanvir Gill from the World Bank Group, and I will be your host and moderator for this session. Welcome also to AgriConnect, the flagship event this season to discuss farms, firms, and the finance of jobs in the agricultural sector. We want this to be an inclusive event. So, all of you to my right, all of you to my left, all of you in this room, and all of you watching across the world, we want you to share your thoughts on this topic anytime using the hashtag #WBGMeetings. We have experts in multiple languages standing by to answer your questions online at live.worldbank.org. Submit your questions in the live chat or using the QR code displayed in front of you. Okay, let’s start the show. Let’s start the show. Let’s start it by inviting on stage. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the President of the World Bank Group, Mr. Ajay Banga, who will lay out his vision for the Banks’ AgriConnect initiative. Mr. Banga.

[Ajay Banga]
Nice to see you. Good morning, everybody. And Tanvir, thank you for that introduction, and for that poem that we just saw being enacted. Look, agriculture has always been central to development. But today, the real issue is, the challenge is, how do you make it a driver of jobs? How do you make it a driver of income? How do you get to food security at scale? How to grow more food, but then turn that growth into a business that produces higher incomes for smallholder farmers and more opportunity across entire economies? Let me start with the why. Over the next 10 to 15 years, about 1.2 billion young people in developing countries will come of age. But current trends suggest that only 400 million jobs will be created. That delta, this is hundreds of millions, will either power the global economy or they will spill over into unrest and migration. That’s why we think that the World Bank Group has to make job creation our central mission. Most jobs ultimately come from the private sector, but they don’t all start there. Countries move along a continuum early on. The public sector tends to drive job creation. Over time, the private capital and entrepreneurship there in that country and from overseas tend to take the lead. Our three-pillar strategy on jobs reflects that arc. Build infrastructure and skills, create predictable regulations and governance in a business-friendly environment with the right guide rails, and back investors with risk tools that crowd in capital. So where do these jobs come from? We see potential in five sectors: infrastructure, agribusiness, healthcare, tourism, and value-added manufacturing. When I say infrastructure, I mean both physical and human infrastructure. Bridges, roads, airports, education, healthcare, skilling. Today, we focus on agribusiness, central both to jobs and to meeting global food demand that has projected a rise more than 50% in the coming decades. Emerging markets are at the center of both of those. The developing world has the ingredients. It has land, it has sun, it has water, it has people. Africa has 60% of the world’s uncultivated arable land and can boost heels on land that is already farmed. Latin America already produces enough food for well over a billion people but infrastructure there is a challenge. And across Asia, smallholder farmers manage most farmland, an enormous base that we can help to lift with better technology, better finance, and better access to markets. Here’s the issue. Globally, 500 million smallholder farmers produce 80% of the world’s food. Yet most of them remain stuck in subsistence farming. They lack electricity, storage, leverage, training, market access. Fewer than one in 10 have access to commercial finance, let alone crop insurance. This opportunity has been there for decades. What’s changing now is our ability to organize at scale to shape the future of food security, nutrition, growth, and employment. Last year, the World Bank Group began executing a strategy that recognized that reality. What we have set out to do is first, help smallholders raise productivity and scale. Second, connect them to structured value chains that lift incomes. And third, guard against exploitation so farmers aren’t forced to sell land for lack of credit, for lack of insurance, or lack of market access. At the same time, we’ve set a target to double our agribusiness commitments to 9 billion dollars a year by 2030, aiming to also mobilize an additional $5 billion from other sources in the private sector. Now, this is what is grounded based on what we have tested in the field and in lessons we are borrowing from others. Remember, stealing shamelessly and sharing seamlessly, that is how we will succeed together. You will hear me talk about stealing shamelessly all the time. It’s not a word bankers use, but it explains exactly what we need to do. Don’t reinvent the wheel at each location. Feel free to copy and steal shamelessly.

[Audience applause]

[Ajay Banga]
Today, we are looking to push this effort closer to scaled execution. The foundation that needs to exist is clear. Policy and infrastructure fixes where they matter. Clarity on land tenure, seed and sanitary standards, basics like irrigation, rural roads, storage and power for the coal chain. Focus on the small farmer who lacks inputs, lacks credit, lacks advice, lacks a dependable buyer. Producer organizations often built by governments, entrepreneurs, or private sector players, they can connect them to suppliers, to insurers, to buyers, and lenders. That gets advice, fertilizer, and working capital to the field, and it creates predictable routes to market. Once predictivity and scale improve, cooperatives sell into structured offtake with SMEs or larger firms. Farmers capture more value, lenders see predictable cash flows, and incomes rise. I have seen this personally in my first job when I was a young management trainee in India working with Nestlé. I saw this work with dairy farmers in the Punjab. I’ve seen it with the Amul Cooperative in India, which transformed India from being one of the world’s most milk-short countries to the number one producer of milk in the world. This works with small farmers, but we have to make it put together. Resilience is embedded at the beginning. It is not added later. Heat tolerance seeds, soil-matched fertilizers, rejuvenation techniques, efficient irrigation, and strong insurance and financing underpin so that a season doesn’t become a bad year, doesn’t become a bad life. Digital is the glue that holds the system together. Small AI tools and basic phones that can diagnose crop disease from a photograph, that can inform fertilizer choices, it can prompt action well ahead of a weather event and move payments securely. That data trail then becomes a credit history. Better underwriting lowers the cost of capital, lower costs, draw in more lenders. That’s the virtuous loop that we want to build. This is not theory. A couple of months ago, I was in India and Uttar Pradesh. I saw all this come together. The foundation, the cooperatives, the resilience, and most importantly, the glue that held it together, the digital system, and it delivered. Proof of concept is it works, and now we need to scale it, and it is scalable. That’s the ecosystem we want to replicate wherever possible. That’s the ecosystem we want to steal shamelessly. But it only succeeds if government, business, and development partners row in the same direction. That is what is on display the rest of this morning. I thank you very much for listening to me. Thank you.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Thank you. Thank you very much, President Banga, for your opening remarks and very inspiring indeed. Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you a bit about myself. Before joining the World Bank in my previous life, I covered global business and financial news for over two decades. And there was one number that stood out for me, a number that I was pretty much obsessed with as a business journalist on a weekly, monthly basis, and that was the food inflation number. Why? Because food inflation has been the key reason for the rising inflation trend all over the world for the last few years. Food and vegetable prices hit their highest level in 2021. Highest since 2005, and have stayed elevated due to supply-side disruptions, dominating dinner table conversations across the world, which makes this topic deeply, deeply personal because it’s also linked to the cost-of-living crisis that we are facing. Global food production needs to increase. It needs to increase by 30% by 2050 to feed nearly 10 billion people by then. It’s a big target, but it must be achieved. Hence, the agribusiness, growing food, growing jobs, is such a core part of the World Bank’s developmental goals. It’s such a high priority for us. Agriculture accounts for roughly 40% of jobs in developing countries. We cannot hope to eliminate poverty, as President Banga highlighted, without supporting our farmers. And that brings me to you, all of you watching. We want to hear what you think about which area of farming and agribusiness has the most potential to grow the economy and create jobs in emerging markets. Your options are on the screen. It should be, one, modernize small farmer techniques to boost productivity. Two, expand access to local and export markets. Three, advance digital tools and AI in rural areas. Four, improve access to financing for small farmers, which, by the way, is a big problem. Let us know your thoughts online at live.worldbank.org or using the QR codes in the room. Okay, moving on. Now, let me invite on stage a farmer and a tech innovator who will share with us their stories on how they are boosting production, driving business, and creating jobs. Please, join me in welcoming on stage Mr. Ricardo Parra, who is the CEO of Las Quinas in Argentina. Ricardo works directly with small producers and women’s cooperatives promoting innovation in value-added food processing. He’s joined by Ms. Nidhi Pant, who is the co-founder of S4S Technologies, Science for Society. Nidhi trains smallholder women farmers to be entrepreneurs by providing them technology, finance, and market access. Could we have a loud round of applause for both of them?

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
They’re both doing some ground-breaking work and really making the change that can take this sector forward in many ways. Ricardo, let me start off by asking you, tell us your story, because Argentina is the third largest food exporter in the world. And so, cooperatives like you, how can you galvanize more support to help protect the interest of the smallholder farmers and the farming family community?

[Ricardo Parra]
Thank you. I’m honored and I’m also grateful to be here today. I’m a beekeeper. I’m from a...

[Tanvir Gill]
You are a beekeeper, yes.

[Ricardo Parra]
Yes. I’m from a very small town in a rural area called General Las Heras, in Buenos Aires province, Argentina, where farming is not just a job, it’s a way of life. At Las Quinas, we work hand in hand with cooperatives of women and small producers. Some are beekeepers, some others gather fruits, special fruits, like the prickly pear from Santiago del Estero, a province at the north of Argentina. We also provide training to help them to learn new skills. We guide them in formalizing their shops, their business. And also, we work together creating value-added products like jams or bottled honey. They have the chance not to sell only raw honey or raw fruits. We do all this with solar panels, zero waste. This work and the education that comes with it, it’s helping hundreds of families to break free from poverty.

[Tanvir Gill]
What’s your vision for your business, Ricardo?

[Ricardo Parra]
In the future, I have a dream. I wish that these cooperatives, these little farmers in Argentina, have Internet access to use the tech tools that are available. Also, I hope they have access to credit in order to expand their jobs, their projects. Also, it’s another dream that they have the chance to sell their productions through for trade. And you know why? Because for me, these cooperatives, these farmers, these small producers are the invisible heroes, the heart of our food system.

[Tanvir Gill]
Yeah, and what do you hope the government would do to help you even more, and also the private sector, because like you said, formal credit is a problem?

[Ricardo Parra]
Yes, we need to work together. The funds are exceptionally... We want the funds, but what we need is education. We need to work together in the field. It’s very close.

[Tanvir Gill]
Right. I want to move to Nidhi now and get your story as well for our audience here, Nidhi, because it’s very inspiring. You work with women entrepreneurs in India, women smallholder farmers. Before we talk a little bit about your business, I want to understand, broadly speaking, how’s the face of agriculture changing in India, which agriculture employs 50% of its labor force? Agriculture, of course, employs 50% of India’s labor force and contributes 18% to 20% to India’s GDP. Where does the story go from there?

[Nidhi Pant]
Thank you for that question. At S4S, we help smallholder women farmers to become processors. We help them get more value for their produce. We provide them with renewable energy-powered equipment, which are solar or biomass-based dehydrators, grain millers, or milk evaporators. So, women who were only selling tomatoes can today sell ketchup. So, we helped them move up the value chain. So first, by providing them with technology. Second, by providing them with access to finance. If you take the story of a smallholder woman farmer who does not have any collateral because of patriarchy, the landholding is with the brother or the husband, so they don’t even have access to a bank account or have access to formal credit. These women farmers are not able to invest today on the infrastructure. So, what we do is that we partner with the State Bank of India, where we help them—

[Tanvir Gill]
Which is India’s largest public sector lender, yes.

[Nidhi Pant]
Yes. And we help them get access to loans for them as affordable as 6%. We started with 31% with non-banking financial institutions. This could only be possible when we bought the markets closer to them. We first had to show the banks that there was a cash flow coming in. When these women farmers started making these food ingredients that go in your ketchup or in your ready-to-eat products, we partnered with large food FMCG companies, secured the market for these women farmers that today they can sell their produce directly to these large corporates that are very stringent with quality. They can match to their standards. Once that market was secured, the banks also came in. It was a systemic approach where different stakeholders were coming together. We brought down the access to credit from 31% to 6%. What it does is that today a smallholder farmer in India who was earlier a daily wage worker or a part

[time worker]
who was working on her farm and had to travel out of her village from 5:00 AM to 6:00 PM, had caregiving responsibilities, was not having any opportunity to have any manufacturing set up. Today at her farm, at her village, has more control over her time and is able to set up this business.

[Tanvir Gill]
That is so inspiring.

[Nidhi Pant]
I think that is what India is doing, is going more up the value chain, helping farmers, not only think as farmers, but also as entrepreneurs.

[Tanvir Gill]
And becoming more inclusive, right?

[Nidhi Pant]
That’s right.

[Tanvir Gill]
With more women joining the workforce and contributing to the agricultural sector. What’s your dream? Because that’s the question that I asked Ricardo as well. What’s your dream with your business?

[Nidhi Pant]
Our dream is that today you find that these ingredients are produced by the farmers, but we believe that these ingredients would also be processed by the farmers. We want them to make more value-added products in a more equitable and sustainable manner. We hope that agriculture is a net climate solution, and we do this by making renewable energy-powered solutions.

[Tanvir Gill]
I have to go, but what are you expecting from the government?

[Nidhi Pant]
We expect that the government has created infrastructure support so that we can also access higher-valued markets like exports.

[Tanvir Gill]
Sure.

[Nidhi Pant]
The roads are good where we are going to these villages. There’s also reliable electricity so that these women, once they also process these ingredients, also have access to a better living, better lives, and they don’t eat last.

[Tanvir Gill]
Yes. When we talk about financial freedom for women and independence, that’s a story that is a live example of how things are changing on the ground. Thank you so very much for your inspiring stories. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for Nidhi and Ricardo. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, sir, for joining us.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Okay. At the World Bank Group, we are focused on connecting the dots between, one, investing in foundational infrastructure, something that President Banga spoke about, which is critical to job creation, and both physical and human capital. Two, supporting policy and regulatory reforms that establish a business-friendly environment. And three, mobilizing private investment at scale. At scale being the operative term. With AgriConnect, we are aiming to bring this approach to life across the food chain. However, time is of the essence, and the data suggests things are not looking good. We’ll bring up some numbers for you on the screen. Now, you can look at these numbers as glass half full or glass half empty. We, at the World Bank, are more solution-oriented, and we are trying to move the needle in actually making changes on the ground that can help with achieving some of the big targets that have been laid out. As of now, less than 25% of all cropland is irrigated, which means it’s a tremendous scope for getting more land under irrigation. One third, 33% of all food produced globally is lost or wasted. Here’s the really big one. This is the big number coming your way. Five trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure will be needed by 2040 to unlock global agriculture’s full potential. That’s more than the size of the Indian economy, or Japan, or Germany. That’s basically a lot of money that we are talking about. Let’s start by understanding how the public sector can create a supporting policy and regulatory environment for investments. Please, join me in welcoming on stage Mr. Muhammad Aurangzeb, who’s the Minister of Finance from Pakistan, sir. Mr. Yegor Perelygin, who is the Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources from Ukraine, and Ms. Mariama Cire Sylla, the Minister of Agriculture from Guinea. Thank you so very much, your Excellencies, for joining us this morning. So glad that you could make the time to be here. Since we have 20 minutes on this panel discussion and a lot to cover, we’ll hit the ground running. Our hearts go out, Mr. Aurangzeb, to the farmers in Pakistan who’ve been impacted by the flood. I know that you’ve spoken about how relief measures have been put in place. But what work is being done to insulate farmers from climate shocks in the future?

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Yeah. I think just the fact-base, about 24% of our country’s GDP is associated with agriculture. And about 95% of the farmers are subsistence-level farmers because they own less than five hectares. The issue has been all the what and the why

[which]
have been very clearly laid out by President Banga, so I’m not going to get into that. But the issues are really related to access to finance, also the storage, and the entire value chain discussion as well. But from the government’s perspective, first of all, I think we need to get the heck out of everything.

[Audience applause]

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Those crops which are doing well, including the export potential, which is rice, maize, they’re doing extremely well in the private sector. We eat sugar. We have big problems. So, we have to just continue with the deregulation that is happening at this point in time. That’s one. Secondly, with respect to access to finance, we have done pilots in Pakistan, where for small farmers, seed and the in-kind products, the pesticides have been given to them. Agronomy services have been provided. Also, with respect to satellite imagery and what type of crop cycle they do, mechanized farming, but for that you need contiguous farms, and then their offtake being taken by the corporates. So, if you think about this closed loop, those interventions, the proof of concept is there with respect to the yields going up, but also the real money into the small farmer’s pocket has gone up when you bring in formalized credit into the picture and you take the middleman out of the picture. The issue is really about scaling it up. And that’s where the government has also come in in terms of ensuring that the banking sector steps up. So, we have given first loss guarantees, and we want to also provide subsidized financing. And the third thing is, especially for the small farmers, just think about it, they are not actually land owners most of the time. So, we have also put out schemes so that we can have uncollateralized debt financing for these small farmers. So, these are the interventions which are taking place, and I fully agree with President Banga, that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. And he used the word stealing without any fear.

[Tanvir Gill]
Cut, copy, paste.

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Yeah.

[Tanvir Gill]
Cut, copy, paste.

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Yeah, cut, copy, paste. But really, success transfer from all the countries from where we can learn, where they’ve been able to scale it up.

[Tanvir Gill]
Where is that?

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
I think we do have a menu on which the government can help with the ecosystem while staying out of it, the storage, the warehouses, so that we can move towards electronic warehouse, receipt financing, because for the small farmers, another big issue is that they are selling, they are forced to sell at a price and at times when they don’t need to. So having that entire storage capacity and warehouse capacity, these are all areas which the government is working on at this point in time, but we do have a long way to go.

[Tanvir Gill]
You do have a long way to go. And I’ll come back to you on that. Minister from Ukraine, I do want to get your thoughts in as well. It’s been an extremely difficult time, needless to say, for the farmers in Ukraine, and it’s been devastating for them. But what is being done on the ground in terms of helping farmers? Because I know that, from a resource allocation perspective, your hands are tied. And so how are you trying to do your best to help farmers in this situation?

[Yegor Perelygin]
Thank you very much for that question. It’s a pleasure to be here. And look, the situation, yes, it’s indeed difficult. You have to consider one very important strategic and core fact about the agricultural nature of our country, which is in the middle of a war right now, in a very serious war. It’s the fact that three quarters of our farmers, they are small farmers. We’re talking about lower than 100 hectares of farms. At the same time before the war, about 4 million households in Ukraine were involved in farming. So, you have to understand that this has been a very, very important core activity for the economy and for the well-being of the people in terms of being small and medium businesses that are contributing to the economic growth of the country. Right now, having had this situation of basically ending up in a war with a lot of destruction, having seen a lot of destroyed land, contaminated farmland, you understand the war is also a very chemically dangerous activity. Basically, we understand that we lost over 11 billion dollars’ worth of farming equipment, mechanisms, machinery.

[Tanvir Gill]
It’s a bit devastating, but where do you go from that?

[Yegor Perelygin]
We are trying to move ourselves. We are forming, basically, we’re pushing the ARISE program, which has been very constructive and very helpful to our, basically, economy. We have raised a couple of hundred million dollars in that regard, which have become a catalytic investment, which have further raised over 3 billion. The idea for this is that we want to use the AgriConnect platform, and we want to use these mechanisms for mainly catalytic investments at the moment, because having limited resources, having budget constraints, this is a big problem. But the only way we understand is that we need these programs to be fully aimed at bringing in more value-added, bringing in more processing power. At the same time, which the Honorable Minister has said, I fully agree, at the same time, we have to push a streamlining and a debureaucratizing process that leads to opening up economic activity. Because right now in a war situation, only economic freedom and economic activity can help sustain the situation.

[Tanvir Gill]
Yeah, and I was reading up on how some Middle Eastern investors have shown interest in investing in the agriculture sector in Ukraine, which I’ll come to in just a moment. Lovely to have you, ma’am, on this panel as well. Guinea has been in a unique situation. Of course, you suffered because of food insecurity on account of the war in 2021, 2022. The thing with Guinea is your potential to up agri-output is right here, I’m told. You have tremendous potential to increase agri-output by many folds. But right now, what you’re witnessing is subsistence farming, rather, the bare minimum. And the gap is explained by lack of water storage, lack of water infrastructure, poor road qualities. So, what can you do to bridge the gap there?

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
Thank you very much. Let me also start maybe with some context. As you mentioned, Guinea has quite a potential in agricultural development. However, the country hasn’t been living up to that potential yet. The country has been mostly leaning on mining revenues so far and having quite some tangible growth, but based on mining and not well-distributed with the population. So, for Guinea, agriculture, as just the poem was saying when we started here, is the way to go to really develop its country. And today, we have a unique opportunity in the country, which is called the Simandou 2040 program. Guinea will put into production its largest mine to date, the Simandou mine, which is the largest mining and infrastructure development in the world. And that mine will bring the country revenues at its peak up to 2 billion dollars per year.

[Tanvir Gill]
So, you’re milking your resources very well. You’re a very resource-rich nation, but I wonder how will the spillover, the knock-on effects work? Because if you’re building infrastructure around mining, then that can also help the agricultural sector, especially in accessing export markets, which would be lucrative.

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
You nailed it. Guinea has to develop a whole development plan. Simandou is not only a mining story, it’s a transformation and development story for Guinea. We plan to use the revenues that are going to be leaving through that program to invest in agriculture. Agriculture is the first pillar of Simandou. We’re planning to build an agro-industry hub around infrastructure built with the mining sector, including a 600 km railway going through the country that’s going to be used to also export products, but also a deep-sea port that will facilitate storage and export of our product in a competitive way. Guinea’s plan is to invest in last mile infrastructure and roads to link those production areas to this infrastructure and use it to make the agriculture competitive. Similar to that, Guinea is also planning to invest heavily on agriculture investment infrastructure, including irrigation, as you mentioned, that’s a very big area to cope with, but also small farmers, capacity building, access to finance, and really support with seeds of quality and resistant to climate, to talk about that. We also have put in place some financial mechanisms that we’re planning to scale up. For example, we have a rapid window to really help producers cope with climate, market disruption, and health shocks. And that window really helped us change the game for quite some farmers. Secondly, we have developed a guarantee fund whose focus is really agriculture. And we’re working with the banking sector with the help of the World Bank, an agricultural project that we have to really scale up and leverage more financing from the private sector to help fund farmers, not only when they face shock, but also overall, because access to finance is very limited. Less than 5% of the financing goes to farmers and even less to smallholder farmers. So, Simandou is that plan to build infrastructure, build the capacity, link up Guinea with the regional and international market as well as in a more competitive way, and hopefully with more revenues and less poverty for the population.

[Tanvir Gill]
We wish you the very best in all your endeavors. Minister Aurangzeb, I do want to come to you. I read a headline that said that the floods have battered farmers —and you spoke about that— factories and your fiscal plans. I wonder how you’re looking at... While you talk about the proof of concept, how are you looking at getting the money in and reallocating resources to fixing the problem that the agricultural sector is facing? Because climate shocks, with the passage of time, will get more severe and more frequent.

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Yeah. I think climate change and agriculture, quite frankly, go hand in hand. And this time around, of course, major damage has taken place, especially to our rice crops. What we have to do is to move towards more adaptation and really bring a real sense of urgency in our journey. I would want to bring the World Bank Group into it because earlier this year, we signed a 10-year country partnership framework. One third of that agenda is to do with climate resilience and decarbonization. So quite frankly, we have the funding and financing available. We now just need to show that we deploy it in a way that we can... Because as you rightly point out, sitting now, we know and we understand that the monsoons are going to arrive in Pakistan two weeks earlier. The frequency and intensity of what we are seeing is happening, and we just need to bring in more sense of urgency.

[Tanvir Gill]
We are in 2025. Should farmers still be relying so much on monsoon predictions and praying to the rain gods?

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Listen, things cannot change overnight. For us, any transformation, we talked about technology, but any transformation is people, process, and technology. So, we are now also focusing on our graduates, because the reality is the research that has happened in Pakistan, agriculture research, is not really up to par. We are now sending them across, especially with our Chinese partners. There are about 1,000 young graduates as we speak who are in various agriculture universities in China who are going to come back and bring back some of that knowledge that we just talked in terms of success transfer. But climate is a big issue, and we need to, as I said, really sharpen our act and get going with some of the adaptation that we need.

[Tanvir Gill]
Right. Minister, I do want to come to you about the Reconstruction Investment Fund that is being set up. I wonder how you’re thinking about redeveloping your agricultural sector from all aspects because I think the number that’s been put out has been 55 billion dollars over the next 10 years. That is what it would take for you to help get your agricultural sector going again. At one point in time, it was contributing almost 20% to your GDP. Whether you’re talking about wheat, Ukraine has been a core, core part of the global food supply chain, whether it’s sunflower, oil, wheat, maize, corn, all of those crops. So, how do you get that money to redevelop your agricultural sector?

[Yegor Perelygin]
Yeah. Actually, as a member of the Reconstruction Investment Fund, I can say that, look, first of all, we see that there is the catalytic investment instrument. Basically, you leverage co-investments while using the fund or using such mechanisms to do political and sovereign, not classical, not traditional, political guarantees. Basically, the presence of an instrument facility like a reconstruction fund, it allows to leverage one equity dollar into five, six, seven dollars of co-investments from big systemic institutional players. That’s number one. Number two is that such funds can help secure either through financial instruments like guarantees, they can secure large formula-based offtakes, and as we all know, offtakes allow to have a prepayment mechanism. So, basically, by having a prepayment mechanism, you would have a prepayment into the capital expenditures needs of your farmers and processors and basically food supply specialists. That’s number two. Number three, mechanisms like the fund, they can take equity stakes in actual projects, in actual facilities, and in actual development of large scale, either farming, either processing or chemical fertilizer, food security projects. So, basically, that’s number three. Number four, what we are thinking is that, look, the number four idea is that we need to develop an international chain of agricultural hubs. And this is where Ukraine wants to put itself on the planet, on the map, by having certain agri-hubs in international grounds. So, basically, that would ease our logistics during the war. Number five is investment into port facilities, because port facilities, they go hand in hand with the agricultural development. We see this as a derisking mechanism and as a market making mechanism.

[Tanvir Gill]
I want to ask all three of you, what are you willing to offer in terms of terms and conditions to join private capital into the agricultural sector? Very quickly, because we have five minutes to wrap up this session. Madame.

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
Thank you very much. Indeed, attracting private capital into Guinea is one of our key priorities. For us, first, it’s about the reform. The business environment is not so conclusive to bring in the private sector. We have really started critical reform, starting with land access. We really have a fast-tracking access to land for investors. We’re currently finalizing the mapping of land, agricultural land in the country, and we are putting in place an e-platform. It’s a cadaster for rural land and access to land. The second element we’re putting in place is a one-stop shop for investors, a way for us to really streamline all procedures to access licensing and all other needs investors have to come into Guinea. And that one-stop shop really has as an ambition to help fasten investment into areas, including the agro-poles and industrial hub we’re planning to build around the corridor of Simandou. Thirdly, we’re also really bringing in Guinea, its natural resources in agribusiness. It has around 10 million of water around the year. It has 13 million arable lands. Most of it is not really tapped into. And it has a young population which we can tap into to really build wealth and attract interesting partners for agricultural development.

[Tanvir Gill]
Provided the young people want to get into the agribusiness, which we’ll talk about later.

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
Working on it.

[Tanvir Gill]
Well, we hope so. We hope so. Very quickly, sir. Key points.

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
No, I think what I said earlier that we continue with our deregulation so that the private sector actually leads the country. We don’t get into procurement targets and price support mechanisms which are all distortionary, number one. Number two, the guarantee structures that I talked about, the first loss guarantees, because especially we talked about just the cash crops, but the value addition that is happening in terms of fruits and vegetables, you really need investment, and huge amount of investment in Pakistan in terms of the coal chains and the coal storages and warehousing, which in turn will help with the export.

[Tanvir Gill]
What numbers are you working with, sir, and what returns are you willing to offer on the table?

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
Just giving an example, I mean, rice alone from nowhere this year, the export potential is about three and a half billion dollars. So, these are all big numbers as we go forward. From our perspective, I think it’s important that the private sector should also, I think it was somewhere picked up here, should consider it as good business so that the government should act as a catalyst to start with in terms of first loss, etc. But then it should really pick up from there.

[Tanvir Gill]
Minister from Ukraine.

[Yegor Perelygin]
I would say first, in our case, that would be privatization projects in existing infrastructure and existing logistical infrastructure. That would be very interesting for agricultural-based businesses, especially those that are building terminals and hubs. Secondly, I would say it’s a Capex compensation mechanism. Basically, with the government helping foster and develop certain capital-intensive projects. And thirdly, I would say is projects that can compensate certain interest rates on long-term credit facilities for farmers, especially for small farmers.

[Tanvir Gill]
All right. I’m going to slip in one more minute. I know my producer is saying wrap, wrap, wrap, but any pledges or commitments that you want to make to your farmers at this forum, sir?

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
As I said, agriculture is actually 24% of our GDP.

[Tanvir Gill]
One minute.

[Muhammad Aurangzeb]
If you take the entire value chain is 40% of GDP. We just want to ensure that we provide them the total ecosystem, from access to finance to guarantees, and take the middlemen out. We call it “Aarti” in Pakistan. So, that is our mission that we take middlemen out.

[Tanvir Gill]
Madam, very quickly.

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
I would say—

[Tanvir Gill]
One minute, we have to finish.

[Mariama Cire Sylla]
I would say investment in facilities to help them access finance, particularly smallholders, and aggregating smallholders and supporting farmer organizations. We have a plan to support in the next 10 years around 300,000 farmer households, and out of those, structure and build capacity of 600 farmers organizations.

[Tanvir Gill]
What about you, sir?

[Yegor Perelygin]
We want to… Help us. This is the message to the farmers. Help us, help you, bring you from raw commodities into more processing to bring in more value-added in a cluster-based approach. This is the future. There is no other future. Margins are going down, so you need to have a cluster-based approach. And this is what we want to do. If we need to deregulate, let us deregulate. But tell us where we need to deregulate.

[Tanvir Gill]
Right. Be proactive. Thank you very much to all our panelists. Thank you, sir. Thank you so very much for joining us. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, ma’am, for being here.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
That was a very insightful discussion, ladies and gentlemen. We heard from key policymakers and governments of developing nations on how strongly they are committed to helping boost agri-output and help their farmers back home. Next, we will, of course, be turning our attention to other multilateral institutions, our development partners on how they plan to solve the problem of food insecurity. The World Bank has strengthened its collaboration and cooperation with its long-standing multilateral partners over decades. Partnerships are the key to lasting impact. It’s about solving global problems together. Today’s challenges, remember, are complex, urgent, and deeply, deeply interconnected. They are too great for one organization to tackle them alone. To meet this moment, partnerships are critical. Working together, we can combine our knowledge, experience, and innovative thinking to deliver meaningful results and improve people’s lives. At the World Bank Group, and I say at the World Bank Group because I’m from it now, our approach is simple. Listen, co-create, build trust, and deliver results. Having said that, may I now invite some of our committed partners to make their pledges for the agri-business. Starting with, ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together, Mr. Sidi Ould Tah, who’s the President of the African Development Bank. President Tah. Please.

[Sidi Ould Tah]
Thank you. Morning. Let me begin by thanking President Ajay Banga, Ajay, and the World Bank Group for the opportunity to take part in this launch of AgriConnect, which is a very ambitious and important initiative for all multilaterals, but also for all the world citizens. It is a transformative initiative which is deeply connected with our mission at the African Development Bank Group. Just a few weeks ago at the United Nation General Assembly with Ajay, we had the pleasure to join forces on Mission 300, with the new energy compact launched by many African countries to connect 300 million Africans to electricity. Today, this collaboration is going beyond that to the agriculture sector. It’s a new chapter of our shared commitment to transform our continent, the African continent, and to bring prosperity to our rural population. Today with AgriConnect, I am delighted to join this important conversation that places jobs, food security, and smallholder farmers at the very heart of our development agenda. I’m very glad to see all these multilateral development banks working together with the World Bank Group in one spirit to deliver on our shared commitment and our shared mandate. This is a strong message. Thank you, Ajay, for bringing us here.

[Audience applause]

[Sidi Ould Tah]
At the African Development Bank Group, we believe in agriculture because agriculture is the most powerful lever we had to create jobs, and we need to create jobs for our youth. This is why, as the African Development Bank, we launched the Feed Africa strategy, and we scaled it up through food and agriculture delivery compacts, which are nationally-owned, expanding value chain and supporting youth employment. The results are tangible. Over 74 million people have become food secure. Eleven million farmers have adopted improved technologies. But today, with AgriConnect, we want to go beyond that. We want to do more and to do it fast.

[Audience applause]

[Sidi Ould Tah]
We want to do more and to do it fast because we know that in Africa, one person in three remains food insecure. At the same time, by 2050, 450 million young Africans will enter the workforce. We need to get prepared for that. That’s why AgriConnect is so important for us. It adds momentum to what we are doing through digital tools that unlock credit and services for farmers, guarantees and blended finance that reduce risk for private investment, and partnerships that turn national roadmaps into delivery on the ground. This is why we are fully committed to support AgriConnect. And AgriConnect aligns squarely with the four cardinal points of my vision for the African Development Bank Group. First, we must mobilize capital at scale. Every dollar must work like 10.

[Audience applause]

[Sidi Ould Tah]
Second, we will rebuild Africa’s financial sovereignty with one voice. Third, we’ll turn our demographics into a dividend by investing in youth and women. Last but not least, we’ll build more resilient infrastructure and add real value to our crops and our agricultural products. Agriculture is where there’s four priorities converged. Together, we can deliver lasting change for farmers, for food systems, and for the future of Africa. Let’s keep moving together from Mission 300 to this new mission with the same determination to scale, align, and deliver. I thank you.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Thank you very much, President Tah. Welcome to our next partner, Mr. Ilan Goldfajn, who’s the President of the Inter-American Development Bank. President Goldfajn, please.

[Audience applause]

[Ilan Goldfajn]
Good morning. It’s a pleasure to be here. This initiative is extraordinary. It’s part of the collaboration of the MDBs. We have never collaborated like that before. Under the leadership of Ajay, we are now again working on a very important initiative. It’s an initiative that connects farms, firms, finance, so it can deliver in very important dimensions: to feed people, to create jobs, and to protect the planet at the same time. The goal is important to reach 250 million farmers, with 9 billion annually by 2030. I want to say here that we stand with you. The Group fully supports the goal to double, both in terms of million farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean, but also in terms of the financing. What does it mean for Latin America and the Caribbean? Well, it means that we plan with this pledge here to reach and connect up to 60% of all farmers in the region by 2030. It means that we will double and our annual financing will reach 1.2 billion dollars of financing. As I always tell my team, we need to be ambitious and realistic. It is ambitious, but it’s realistic for our region. So, thank you very much to all.

[Audience applause]

[Ilan Goldfajn]
As important as the pledge is, it is also important how to reach there. Of course, we need to talk about technology. And the future of agriculture is precision digitalization, using technology to monitor and manage seeds, fertilizers, water more efficiently, use drones, satellites, sensors, AI, robotics. All of this can reach the farmers, as small as they are, to boost productivity while reducing waste and emissions. We are doing it. We’re already starting in Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua. We can get there. We need the enablers. We need three enablers, at least. One of them, financial innovation. How we can finance the best way. Microfinance, rural microfinance, like the FINAGRO we do in Colombia or in Mexico, we will launch a biodiversity bond. But we also need scale and knowledge. We need dialog. We need the platforms. We have a regional dialog platform. We can have a global one under the leadership of Ajay and the World Bank. And all of this builds on strong institutions. So, we need to work with public and local actors so that we can foster all of this ambition. Let me close to say congratulations again. Thank you, Ajay. Thank you, Alvaro

[Lario]. Thanks to the African Development Bank for being with us. It’s a shared vision that is taking root already. The IDB Group shares this vision, and we look forward to working with you and with all of you here. Thank you very much.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Thank you very much, President Goldfajn. And last but not the least, Mr. Alvaro Lario, the President of IFAD, will be joining us on stage with his pledge. President Lario.

[Audience applause]

[Alvaro Lario]
Thank you very much. And thank you especially to Ajay for putting small-scale farmers and agriculture at the core of investments and creation of jobs. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of people. And clearly, the challenges are enormous. We talk about scalability, we talk about aggregation, and all of this speaks to what IFAD directly does, to our mission, to our vision. We are basically the institution focusing on rural areas, on small-scale farmers. This is our core and business, and it’s also our bread and butter. So today, I’m very happy to support this initiative and also to announce a pledge that we will be reaching 70 million small-scale farmers by 2030. And that’s our commitment to the AgriConnect.

[Audience applause]

[Alvaro Lario]
Our competitive advantage actually relates very much to, as Ajay was mentioning, really making agriculture going from subsistence farming to really small-scale production. For that, it’s important to coordinate and to integrate investments in production, but also in distribution, in logistics, in processing, in marketing, storage, all of those jobs that are not only on-farm jobs, but actually off-farm jobs. Those are the jobs that can attract also the youth, very much linked to digital components and making really farming a business, which is how we will be attracting many of the youth. For us, our impact assessment really showed that this really works. I mean, in many of our investments, and we reach 100 million in our last replenishment cycle of small-scale farmers, it’s driving one-third more of an income, one-third higher harvest, one-third greater access to markets. And most importantly, many of these investments are in the most rural areas, in the most challenging and fragile states, and really where it’s making a difference, a big return on investment in food security, but also in prosperity and stability, which is fundamental in today’s time. This is why it’s important that we are here together as partners, that we are connecting the farmers organizations, the producer organizations, the private sector, the MDBs, the public development banks, the governments. And this is how for us it’s important to partner with many of the, I would say, partners in the room, because this is how we will make a difference. None of us will be able to do it alone. And agriculture, as you know, and Ajay always emphasizes, I think it’s uniquely placed to drive growth, to create jobs, and also to build resilience. That’s why it’s a truly inspiring mission. Thank you very much for putting it together, for bringing us together. And I would just set up the ambition even higher. I would not only talk about reach, I would also talk about depth and breadth. It’s important that we also measure how we are transforming lives, the jobs, the incomes, and this is how we need to come together. Rich is not enough. We need to transform livelihoods on the ground. So, thank you all, and thank you very much for the opportunity.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Indeed, President Lario, it is about transforming lives and livelihoods, and at the heart of it is job creation. Thank you very much once again to all our partners for their commitments and results. Up next, we’ll get a conversation going with the private sector players who understand this business as well and have been investing in it for a while to understand how they can pitch in to make the dream of food security a reality. But first, let’s review some more data on the challenges and opportunities for our farmers, especially the smallholders from emerging markets. We’ll get some numbers up for you on the screens once again. And again, you have to look at these numbers from a point of opportunity on where we can go from here how we can build from here collectively. Only 10% of small-scale farmers, ladies and gentlemen, have access to formal credit. It’s a major pain point for this community and something that really, really needs attention from all participants. And of course, that includes the public sector players, the private sector players, as well as the multilateral organizations. Next, African farmers and agribusinesses could create a trillion-dollar food market by 2030. So that’s a big number. We’re talking about Africa over here, but if it’s well supported, the potential is huge for the agri-sector to expand across emerging economies and across the world. That’s where the focus lies for us at the World Bank Group. Last but not the least, when it comes to new tech adoption in some regions, AI adoption, and we haven’t spoken about AI for this while in the session, but we will as we go into the next panel discussion. AI adoption has shown to cut the use of water by 30% for rice farming. This kind of cost reduction, ladies and gentlemen, can go a long way in enhancing price discovery and profitability for farmers around the world. To speak more about this, please welcome on stage Mr. Bill Anderson, our next panel member, the CEO of Bayer, needs no introduction, a leading global enterprise in agriculture products. Ms. Rose Goslinga, who’s the CEO of Pula, an insure-tech business based in Kenya that has been providing agricultural insurance to 15.4 million farmers. There are 15.4 million farmers. And Mr. Chege Kirundi, who’s the chairman of Kenya Tea Development Agency, which is privately owned by 700,000 small-scale farmers and contributes... That’s right. Big round of applause.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
And contributes to 60% of tea production in Kenya. It’s so lovely to have all of you on this panel today. Thank you very much for your time. Bill, let’s start off with you. You’ve heard our other panelists, our other multilateral partners. Give us one or two of your long-term solutions to the issue of food security. How do you think about it?

[Bill Anderson]
Well, it’s tremendous potential to bring the power of new technologies and innovations to the 500 million smallholder farmers in the world. I had an opportunity to experience that firsthand in March. I was in Zambia where we were opening a new seed processing plant, 32-million-dollar investment that we made there. I met a number of farmers. It was harvest time. I met a farmer named Lisa. It really stood out in my mind. I asked her, “What’s your experience been with these hybrid seeds?” Because this is a new thing.

[Tanvir Gill]
Yeah, it is.

[Bill Anderson]
And she said, “I’ve had them for about five years.” So, I said, “Well, what has the difference been?” And she said, “Well, we used to produce on one hectare, we produced between 500 and 1,000 kilos, and now we’re producing 5,000 to 7,000 kilos.” I was astonished, but I said, “So what does that mean practically for you?” And her eyes lit up. She had a big smile and she said, “Cash.”

[Audience laughter]

[Tanvir Gill]
Yes. That’s everything to them.

[Bill Anderson]
And I was like, “What do you mean?” “Yeah, we never had cash.” “Now we have cash.” And I said, “Well, what do you do with that cash?” She said, “I buy more seeds, I buy trees.” “We’ve expanded our farm.” And by the way, her boys were with her. She had two young boys. She grew up on the same farm. She said, “Their life is going to be totally different than my life has been.” And so that’s what it means. Yes.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Yeah, yeah. It is a very inspiring story, and I think we are learning about more such stories. I mean, if you heard from Nidhi and Ricardo today, that’s an example as well of how things are changing on the ground. But I want to, again, ask you very specifically about one or two solutions that you think can be really game changers on the ground when it comes to modernizing agriculture.

[Bill Anderson]
Well, so hybrid seeds for corn, that’s a big one. We’re talking 7-to-10-time yield increases. That’s huge. Another one, we were just talking about in your slide, you were talking about water consumption in rice. Direct seeded rice is another innovation that we’re bringing to many parts of Asia now, which basically allows a huge labor reduction because you don’t have to transplant the rice, and you’re not using water in the planting time in the way it’s used in conventional rice farming. We’re talking about 40% less water use, talking about 40% less production of methane. Rice production is a huge contributor to greenhouse gasses because of the methane production.

[Tanvir Gill]
That’s right.

[Bill Anderson]
These are a couple. There’s many more to come.

[Tanvir Gill]
There’s many more to come, and you’re at it.

[Bill Anderson]
We’re at it.

[Tanvir Gill]
At Bayer. Okay. Rose, you’re doing some ground-breaking work in insuring the farmers, giving them a backstop so that they don’t have to worry half-sleep-less nights about a failed crop. But I wonder whether when it comes to modernizing and when it comes to adoption of new farming techniques and what have you, whether we are running at the right pace or can we run faster? How do you think about it representing the agri-tech community, so to speak? It’s not just about insure-tech, but also agri-tech at large.

[Rose Goslinga]
I love what Bill was saying because I think at the core, farmers at the moment are pretty stagnant. Our yields have been at one to two metric tons. We didn’t coordinate this, but in my mind, I was thinking, around a thousand kilograms, that’s what farmers have been at. And they’ve been at this level for centuries. If they would change to five to seven metric tons, they would all of a sudden make a profit. If we’re thinking about that in the agri-tech space, I think we have to very closely work together as partners. For us to grow, we insure at this point per year, we insure 5 million farmers. And since we started, about 20 million. The key for us to actually get to farmers and to get to that scale at speed was to do something very unconventional. And my investors, when I explained this the first time, really ran for the hills. We said, “We have to partner with the elephant in the room in agriculture, which are governments.” We have to partner with them. I can tell you, my Series A investors, when I proposed that in 2020, they nearly ran away. But they said, “Okay, well, if this is what you want to do, okay, fine, we’ll back you, we’ll still stay.” The money was already in the bank, so they couldn’t pull it out anymore. But I’ll tell you, at that point in time, before that, we tried a bunch of things, but we just weren’t getting to that scale. And we realized for a product like insurance, our average insurance premiums are six dollars per farmer. Six dollars, right? That’s premium. And then we take 20% of that to cover and run our business. But most of it goes to cover these risks. If you think about, for us, scale is a real factor of millions. 10,000 farmers, I think in our space, we have a severe disease called “pilotitis.” And we need to get rid of that. But if you think about in the agriculture sector where government programs are reaching millions of farmers, in Zambia, what Bill was talking about, one in three farmers have insurance products through Pula. It’s because we built partnerships with the government, insuring from the very poor, most vulnerable, women-headed households all the way to farmers accessing loans through banks. But it’s because we built those partnerships across.

[Tanvir Gill]
Has it been as smooth sailing as you expected? Are investors still okay?

[Rose Goslinga]
Okay, well, I’m embarrassed to say this.

[Tanvir Gill]
I know that you guys have a partnership. Bill, are you happy with the work Pula is doing?

[Bill Anderson]
Yeah, I would just say Rose is being way too modest because the effect of their programs means that when farmers have a bad harvest, of course, it’s bad, but it’s not a catastrophe. They don’t have to start from scratch again because their input costs are covered and they can plant again. And what that means not just for that farmer, but for these nations. Imagine a bad year. And Zambia had a really bad year two years ago. And without that crop insurance, so many of those small farmers, they would not have had the capital to plant the next. Imagine you follow a terrible harvest with half planting and what that means for a nation. So, it’s super important what they’re doing, but we need a lot more of it. Keep going.

[Tanvir Gill]
Rose is going red, but please complete your point.

[Rose Goslinga]
In Zambia, we actually handled the largest crop insurance payout to date in Africa for 500,000 farmers for 35 million dollars. I would say people ask me what the impact of insurance is. I’d say that’s impact. The president went around the country and said, “We have had a drought, but I have this friend called insurance.” And it was clearly a new friend. He didn’t really believe that it would happen. We had to rally the insurance sector. But I’ll tell you, it’s also really hard. You said, has it been easy? Working with government takes time. You have to be extremely patient. Our business model relies on... We can’t sell it as a standalone, so we package it into, let’s say, a bag of fertilizer costs 30 dollars, add two dollars, and it’s insured. But that also means that you have to convince a government that you’re going to increase the price of fertilizer. That’s close to political suicide for most ministers of agriculture that I’ve worked with.

[Tanvir Gill]
Some ministers of agriculture right here. We just spoke to them. I hope they’re listening.

[Rose Goslinga]
Absolutely, right? I think the partnership earlier this year that we launched with Bayer, which is called the 10 Million Resilient Farmer initiative, literally, for the first two seasons, Bayer pays for the premium, taking out the sting of that initial political suicide, but also showing that it works because nobody really believes that insurance companies are going to pay. When they do, they’re like, okay, wow. Okay, right. Okay, fine. I would say that then you can...

[Tanvir Gill]
You’re bridging the trust deficit.

[Rose Goslinga]
Yeah, then you can build that gap. Then you can really get that buy-in, and then you can make it sustainable. By now, this year, it took us six years to build four PPPs, Public-Private Partnerships. This year alone, in the partnership with Bayer, we built an additional three and insured an additional one million farmers. So, it’s creating that step change.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Kudos to you. Kudos to you.

[Rose Goslinga]
Thank you.

[Tanvir Gill]
Yeah. You’re making a lot of difference on the ground.

[Rose Goslinga]
I think if you’re thinking about AgriConnect, it’s those kinds of partnerships across the spectrum from private sector and government. It’s World Bank and IFC coming together. I love that World Bank put all of these government and these private sector people in the room. It’s so important.

[Tanvir Gill]
It is. We have, I think, about 10, 12 minutes left on this discussion, and the next five minutes will go to you, sir. Chege, how has your experience been? I want to know that because you are run by 700,000 farmers, 60% of tea production in Kenya is what you own and contribute to. What’s next for you? When you’re putting in 60%, when you’re controlling 60% of the production and contributing to 60% of the production of the country, what’s next for you?

[Chege Kirundi]
A transformation. I think that’s the next frontier for us.

[Tanvir Gill]
How do you think the government can help you with that? Who will help you the most?

[Chege Kirundi]
The government puts in a subsidy for fertilizer for the last three years now. But mostly we are able to purchase fertilizer. But for the last three years, we have got subsidies. The way forward for tea—

[Tanvir Gill]
Is it working well? Because subsidy mechanisms often have transmission issues.

[Chege Kirundi]
Yes, there are those issues. It’s not working very well there, but we can’t give up. We have to make sure that we have inputs, although they are very expensive today, so that we help the farmer to grow and develop. I want to say that our strength is aggregation, because a farmer’s family… Each family has about 0.5 of an acre, about 0.25 of a hectare. We are strong in aggregating the tea farmer’s leaves from collection centers that are near where they are. Logistically, we take it over and we take the leaves to the factory. We process the leaves. And then, we take the tea to Mombasa because we are in Kenya. And then from there, then it’s exported. So, we manage from the farm to the manufacturing, logistics, to Mombasa international trade. But our organization is owned 100% by the farmers. We are elected in terms of governance by the farmers. You must be a farmer like I’m a farmer myself. A small-scale farmer.

[Tanvir Gill]
You are?

[Chege Kirundi]
Yes, I am.

[Tanvir Gill]
But doing big things.

[Chege Kirundi]
Well, yes. When we aggregate, we are huge because you contribute about 4% of GDP. And we are the second-highest earner of foreign currency in Kenya. So, we are huge in terms of when we aggregate and we largely depend on economies of scale. That’s what helps us.

[Tanvir Gill]
And there’s a big opportunity coming your way because I believe China wants to buy more tea from Kenya, and the government is very excited about that. They are saying we’ll do that at zero tariffs. I wonder, with somebody who’s doing so much as far as tea development is concerned in the region, can you do it alone? Can you scale up production alone, or would you need a Bayer to help you out?

[Chege Kirundi]
Well, we need partnerships. In fact, we have been with a partnership with the IFC since 1965.

[Tanvir Gill]
So financial partnerships or strategic partnerships?

[Chege Kirundi]
Both. And we are quite happy with the IFC since 1965. World Bank then gave us 30 million US dollars for 30 years with a grace period of 10 years that helped us to plant the tea bushes that we started off because we started in 1964. Then, we also had another tranche to increase the hectares from 5,800 by another 6,000 hectares, again by IFC. And thereafter, we also got another tranche that helped us to do warehousing, which was about 12 million dollars to expand the warehousing space with 229 square feet of space. Thereafter, we also got another tranche of finance from IFC again, and to do the logistics. And we’re quite happy that that partnership has, since ’65, we have been partners with IFC, and we are a good example to put in that partnership’s work. And for us, it has worked very well with the IFC.

[Tanvir Gill]
Which is very encouraging.

[Chege Kirundi]
To transform these organizations, of course, now we need to stop selling the bark, because that’s what we do, to value add the teas. The government has come on board with a tea act that is compelling us to add value 40% of what we produce, which would be roughly about 80 million kilograms of mid tea per year. That’s a tall order. To do that, we must be closer to the market. To do that, we need to transform.

[Tanvir Gill]
So, infrastructure is important.

[Chege Kirundi]
Yeah. We need, therefore, to change the business model to what is going to be adaptive to the environment now.

[Tanvir Gill]
I want to pick up on that point, Chege, and go to Bill again. Bill, in that conversation of big Ag versus small Ag, how can big Ag help small Ag with modernizing agriculture, scaling up, and may I come back to our pet theme, creating jobs?

[Bill Anderson]
Yeah. First off, small Ag farmers are very resourceful. They’re very clever. They’re really adept at making the most of what they have. Big Ag, we bring technologies. We bring things, some farming techniques, technologies, but I think it’s really partnerships. For example, we can work with governments to establish some of these things that you were mentioning. The infrastructure is critical. I mean, for example, we built this seed plant, and it can supply 10 million smallholder farmers, which is twice as many, I think, than are in Zambia. So this is enough for a number of countries. But we got to have open borders. We’ve got to have foreign exchange. We need good roads. We need storage facilities. We need electricity. Farming is a treacherous business.

[Tanvir Gill]
It is, yeah.

[Bill Anderson]
Because you’re always subject to the weather. But if you’re subject to the weather, but then you’re also subject to all those other things I just mentioned, that’s where we really got to clear the path.

[Tanvir Gill]
Right. You, I know, Bill, have been working with the smallholder farmers. You’ve been working with cooperatives. I want to understand from Chege. Chege, how keen are you to work with big agricultural companies to scale up?

[Chege Kirundi]
A lot. First of all, we have 700,000 growers.

[Tanvir Gill]
Is that a hint for Bayer?

[Chege Kirundi]
But those are heads of families. We have to multiply that with an average of five per family. We are dealing with about 3.5 million people. We impact the Kenyan economy with about 10% of Kenyan population who depend on us. We are that huge. It also shows how strong aggregation can be. Scaling up, we need a marketing angle that requires money so that we are able to reach now directly to the customer. We export 90% of our production, so our marketing is outside the country, and we need the government. The government has come with regulations to give us an environment to be able to move that way. We are seeking partners where we sell our teas, including here.

[Tanvir Gill]
Bill, seeking partners. Yes.

[Bill Anderson]
Bring it on.

[Tanvir Gill]
Chege, are you keen?

[Chege Kirundi]
Yes, yes.

[Tanvir Gill]
Can a deal happen right now?

[Chege Kirundi]
I’m keen. We are looking for partners to be able to reach the customers where they are, and they are all over the world.

[Tanvir Gill]
Sure.

[Chege Kirundi]
Of course, we sell a lot in the Middle East, and we also do so to Russia. We sell to Europe, and we also sell minimally here. But here we need to remove and take our market share. But you cannot do that unless we partner. So, we are looking for partners. I’m simply saying, partnerships, partnerships are the way to go. That will help us to upscale, to value add. Of course, we need to jointly do that with the packers of tea around the world. We need marketing channels.

[Tanvir Gill]
Partnerships and marketing channels, Chege. I’m so sorry, but we’re completely out of time, sir. Completely. I wish we could go on for an hour, but time is of the essence here. We’re completely running out of time. Thank you very much to all three of you. Before we go, we have one minute left, and that one minute belongs to you. You have a very important announcement to make, Bill, so why don’t you take center stage and give us what you have.

[Bill Anderson]
Thanks, Tanvir. Yeah, I’m really excited today to have the opportunity to make a special announcement in conjunction with our partnership with the World Bank and AgriConnect. We want to play a really unique role in joining forces with the World Bank because we believe in the potential of agriculture as a tremendous engine for jobs, for growth, for food security, and so we want to seal that partnership with a memorandum of understanding with the World Bank today. This is around investments in further local seed production, things like crop insurance, and other tools that will help accelerate this progress from subsistence farming to prosperous smallholder farming. There’s one particular focus on this that has to do with technology that I want to highlight. I’m really excited about, which is something that we want to bring, the latest technologies, and we’re going to bring this to trials in Africa now, which is nitrogen fixing wheat. And in case you don’t know what that means, so for example, soy and other legumes, they have a property where their roots actually will encourage the... Bringing nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil to serve as a nutrient. Corn, wheat, other plants, most other crops don’t have this property; and therefore, they deplete nitrogen from the soil. They require more fertilizer. So, the dream of nitrogen fixation in a plant like wheat is like alchemy, being able to convert iron into gold. Thanks to modern technologies, we actually have the prospect to do this. And we want to bring this to Africa now with first trials in the fields. We’ve announced that we are going to forego our intellectual property for the continent of Africa on this technology.

[Audience applause]

[Bill Anderson]
We hope this can be a big boon in terms of improving farm economics, improving soil health, reducing the costs of things like fertilizer, and boosting yields. Really excited. It’s an exciting day to see the World Bank and its partners put such a focus on agriculture. We believe this is really key for the future of the whole planet, but especially the emerging markets. And so, thanks for allowing us to be a part of it and congratulations.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
Thank you very much. I want all of you to be on stage for just a moment as I invite back on stage President Banga to greet all of you.

[Ajay Banga]
Ajay, Ajay. Yeah, thank you.

[Tanvir Gill]
I’ll get there, sir. One day I’ll get there. All right. President Banga, just have a moment with all of them.

[Ajay Banga]
I see you, I see you. I just learned new words. I learned the combination of nitrogen fixation, which is not something I dream about every day, but I see this guy does. But combining that with alchemy and caring, that’s a cool combination. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. Please, join me once again. Congratulations.

[Audience applause]

[Ajay Banga]
Thank you, thank you.

[Tanvir Gill]
I believe you have another big present left for us, Mr. Banga.

[Ajay Banga]
Yes. I’m going to ask Ruth Porat of Alphabet. She’s here, otherwise called Google. I call her Ms. Google, but in reality, the President of Alphabet, Ruth Porat. Please, come up now.

[Audience applause]

[Ajay Banga]
We’ve been friends for some years, and it goes back to our, I think, I don’t know, 15 years now. She used to be the CFO at Morgan Stanley at a point of time, and her boss and I were very good friends as well. Then when she went off to Google and I was in MasterCard, we became closer and did a lot of work together. Now, I find myself in Uttar Pradesh a little while ago, and I’m looking at some work going on, and I discover that Google is back looking at agriculture. I thought an interesting conversation between her and us would be, why do you think that digital and AI and technology… Everybody’s talked about it in this group before we came on stage. Why do you guys care? What do you think about it? Why do you think it can transform a smallholder farmer’s life? What’s in it? What are you doing? Why are you doing this?

[Ruth Porat]
Well, first of all, it is fantastic to be here, and thank you for this really important conversation. Why? We heard it all today. Farmers are such an important part of the global economy, the opportunities there, and it’s nothing short of irresponsible if we’re not providing the support to enable all of us to unlock what that upside is. Whenever I travel the globe and I meet with heads of state, the one thing I’m hearing increasingly is about AI, no surprise. But what they’re saying is we will become a part of this digital transformation. We must be a part of the digital transformation because we see the economic upside. We see the opportunity to better deliver services around farming, around health care, around education. I keep getting asked exactly this question, “Can AI actually help with farmers?” The answer is yes. You saw a little bit of that. So, what my amazing colleagues started to do some time ago is look at whether we could build a platform that would be helpful to farmers and co-creating, working with the World Bank and your extraordinary colleagues. We have created one, Open Networks, which is an extraordinary opportunity, Open Network Stacks. What we’ve done is we’ve created something that enables you to use conversational AI so that farmers can actually access information they need to address a lot of the issues that were talked about today. We focused on what you could do for farmers pre-harvest, information about crops and infestation. There’s going to be more information about loans and what we can do on financing. We looked at what we could do for farmers post-harvest, everything about access to information, access to markets, how they can boost what their returns are. And that’s a bit of what you saw in this small pilot that we did. And we’ve already seen that you can get an uplift in the economics for farmers. So, we were totally inspired by it. And then, the conversation with you just turbocharged that. And so, now what we’ve done is bringing together the talent of the World Bank and the experience, what we’re doing at Google and google.org, which is our philanthropic arm. We’ve put together this group, and then, of course, bringing in Networks for Humanity, which is saying, “We’re going to take this platform and we should take it everywhere.” It’s a small pilot in India. It needs to scale in India. And then, to any other market that is asking this question, “How can we support our farmers?” The added point that I know you and I get really excited about is this platform now is for agriculture. But the opportunity is you can support, governments can support any service that is needed. How do you support healthcare workers? How do you support educators? And so, again, there’s an opportunity to scale it, and that’s what we get excited about.

[Ajay Banga]
Let me explain what I saw. What I saw was women in cooperatives in Uttar Pradesh who were using, and they’re not educated, they were using this simple language-driven open platform that Google built into which the cooperatives are plugged on one side, and companies like Bayer, but many others as well, were plugged in for everything from fertilizer to insecticide, to crop insurance, to financing. These women could actually get access to what they don’t get, scale, the benefit that larger people have. What did this transform? This is the true democratization of knowledge. That’s what this was. I said this about Google when I was a younger guy, that Google democratized the availability of information. When I was young, if you wanted to know where the Galápagos was, you had to acquire the Encyclopedia Britannica. My family couldn’t afford it. Now, you Google it. That transformation is what this is about. Take democratization of knowledge, access to markets, and space. That’s what I saw. That’s what I got excited with. I’ve known Ruth for a long time. I know one thing. If you shake her hard enough, money falls out.

[Audience laughter]

[Ruth Porat]
There’s one more thing, my friend. Thank you for that. I thought a heart falls out, not just money. The other exciting element is there are entrepreneurs everywhere who are close to what the issues are. Now, with what we’re doing with Open Artisan, you are in trouble for that. With what we’re doing, we are now—

[Ajay Banga]
I’m going to pay for this one.

[Ruth Porat]
No, I think I’m going to, actually. I see your point. We are working with hundreds of entrepreneurs who are saying, I see another solution that I can add to the platform. We started, we’ve done the pilot with 13,000 farmers, which is a nice starting point. We’ve seen the uplift, but we’ve got to scale it to millions together. What’s exciting are these hundreds of entrepreneurs that we’re already seeing who are saying, and more can be done, and many of the ideas that were talked about here today. We’re excited we’re on this journey together and look forward to it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Guys, please thank Ruth Porat.

[Audience applause]

[Ajay Banga]
Thank you.

[Tanvir Gill]
Thank you, Ajay. Thank you, Ruth, for that exciting, exciting news, for that exciting announcement. Before we wrap up, ladies and gentlemen, I want to revisit the question I posed to the audience at the start of the event. I want to repeat that question. The question was, which area of farming and agribusiness has the most potential to grow the economy and create jobs in developing countries? And the polling results are in. They’re on your screens. 52%, a majority think they should look at improving access to financing for small farmers, which is something that Ajay has been talking about pretty much through the show. 25% of you think you should be looking at modernizing small farmer techniques. Again, a very critical point to highlight. 16% of pollsters think we should expand access to local and export markets. And just 7% chose advanced digital tools and AI. Thank God I missed out on that topic. I didn’t touch upon it at all, with the guests. Well, I think I read the room well. On that note then, food for thought. We will wrap up. This show brings us, of course, this discussion and the announcements bring us to the end of this event. It has been such an enriching and enlightening session, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did bringing it to you.

[Audience applause]

[Tanvir Gill]
You can watch. It took a village, many villages, actually, to put this show together. You can watch the replay of the session and our other events at live.worldbank.org. Please, continue sharing your comments online with the #WBGMeetings. We would love to hear from you. Thank you all for joining us, and have a lovely rest of the day. Thank you very much.

[Audience applause]

[Lively music]