 Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and this is obviously a really important topic for us as we have been looking at the design and launch of what you all are aware, the major initiative on food security under U.S. foreign assistance. And it's particularly important because one of the very explicit assumptions that underlines the U.S. strategy for food security is that driving economic growth through agriculture will be reliant upon leveraging private sector investment. So the role of the private sector is really central to U.S. vision for food security as the driver of engagement in the ag sector and in particular to get the economic growth that is in our mind the real route to addressing food security. So what I thought I would do is talk a little bit about some of the experiences that we have in supporting public-private partnerships, particularly around the technology arena, not trying to cover broadly all of our investments in public-private partnerships, but focus on the development, delivery, and application around technology. And to talk about some of those experiences that we've had in various different tools that we've been able to bring to bear from that experience. In essence I think the role of the U.S. government has been largely around two aspects of why we've used public-private partnerships. One is clearly to invest in development and delivery of technology where the market isn't there for the private sector to do this on their own. So where their market failures or inadequate size of markets, the U.S. government has played a role in ensuring that technology still, that technology from the private sector that has application to the small-scale farmers that are our constituency, does still move forward. And then secondly, to reduce the risks that the private sector face in going into underdeveloped markets in particular. So around the area of technology development, we've worked with the private sector under a number of different modalities, specifically looking at how to take access, to access technology that exists in the private sector, apply it potentially in different crops or in some of the crops that the private sector is engaged with, but don't see necessarily near-term commercial markets. So one of the means of doing this, as was discussed already on the panel, is around the donation or licensing of technology, where really the private sector has had a fairly small role to play, but instead is making technology available to public institutions to further undertake the research and development of those technologies for application in Africa. And a really important tool that we have supported in this realm has been the establishment of an organization called the African Agricultural Technology Foundation. And I highlight that because it came into being explicitly out of conversations with the private sector, mostly multinational corporations, about how to improve the transfer of technology. How do we get more technology going for application in Africa? And one of the really important or one of the barriers that the private sector identified was the potential liability associated with licensing technology, particularly around GM technology, genetically modified crops, but also other technologies where companies were concerned that in trying to do the right thing, they may put themselves at risk from liability concerns. So the ATF, as it's known, was explicitly designed to be a legal entity that could hold licenses from the private sector and make those technologies available in a way that protected companies from liability concerns. And the goal of the ATF was to ensure that there was stewardship of that technology as it was developed and deployed, sort of ensuring that research went beyond proof of concept as people would call it in the private sector, but really went beyond that into the actual deployment of technology. And I'll come back to that because I think that's a really important area where partnering with the private sector has been very important in helping us understand that it goes beyond that making technology deliver on the ground for producers, small scale producers in Africa, it takes more than just funding research, it really takes the deployment of that technology. And that's an area where the private sector is strong and where the public sector is not necessarily quite as strong. A specific example of a project we have funded where industry has really just donated or licensed technology has been the development of insect-resistant cowpea. This is a genetically engineered or genetically modified cowpea variety that has a BT gene that's been licensed from the Monsanto Corporation for public sector partners to further develop and deploy that in cowpeas for Africa and has involved a significant network of both international and African research institutions to deploy that technology. Taking a step further in terms of engagement, we have examples where industry is really co-developing technology with public sector partners and that the role of the United States has been to provide support for industry to engage in those collaborative relationships. An example of that that we're currently supporting is around development of nitrogen use-efficient rice for West Africa. This is a small biotech company in California called Arcadia. Biosciences that has a technology whereby GM crops require only one-third the amount of nitrogen fertilizer to get the same yield. So if you think about this in the context in developing countries where fertilizer is obviously a key constraint, it's a high cost or the delivery systems aren't there. Nitrogen use-efficient rice can help us circumvent some of those infrastructure challenges around fertilizer. So here the company is actually actively engaged in the research process for the development of that technology with African public sector partners and our support is going to both the company and the African partners. Increasingly we're also looking at how is it that we can better incentivize industry to develop and deploy technology either faster or to a broader collection of farmers, not relying on the actual transfer of that technology to the public sector, but instead trying to make those market opportunities grow for the private sector to invest. And I will talk about some tools that we are doing that, but one example specifically where we're focused on the technology development piece of that is actually not yet in Africa, but working with two companies around development of what we call ABOT, Extreced Tolerant Rice and Wheat, those working at looking at traits like drought tolerance and heat tolerance in rice and wheat for South Asia. We're funding a U.S. company, again this Arcadia Biosciences and an Indian company, to work together to develop and deploy these technologies in South Asia. Here again the U.S. role has been to accelerate the deployment of that technology in a country that the U.S. corporation might not otherwise look at, but also to work with these two companies to broaden the delivery of that technology to farmers that they might not normally target. So really looking at broadening the delivery mechanisms. And again as I mentioned I think this is as important in terms of thinking about public-private partnerships as the previous two examples or modes in which we work, because what industry really brings to bear in the technology arena not only is some good science, but also the ability to develop and deploy technology. R&D, often the D part gets underplayed within the public sector because it's not with the reward systems for our U.S. universities and even national and international research institutions. So really transferring between a technology research project and delivery of a commercial product even if it's free and done through the public sector, a real product to the farmers is something that industry excels at. And that's an area I think that our own agency has learned a lot from working with the private sector is to focus more on the product delivery side of things and to really try to work with our partners to help them understand what a product development pathway looks like. And I think that's an ongoing challenge that we look forward to working with our private sector partners. Amit Roy talked about the virtual fertilizer development research center which is something that we're supporting to both to gain sort of a critical mass of research both within the public and the private sector on development of a new generation of fertilizer technologies. So I think that's an example again where public funding can help spur innovation in both the public and the private sectors. In this case, we don't have a very direct role in the research itself. I think there was also on the last panel some very important discussions around how we can improve the delivery of new technologies. Certainly I think some of our work as well as others around the development of input industries, the seeds and fertilizer industries, the work of agra for example and the agro dealer networks programs such as that we support called the West Africa Seed Alliance which is working on the dealer networks but also in strengthening the seed companies themselves training in good business practices for example. Those are really critical if we're going to take technology out of the public sector or frankly from licenses from larger corporations that work in this arena. Because local companies are essential to the delivery of technology and I was happy to hear there was a really good discussion about that piece of it. The public extension obviously is a very big part of that as well and I think that's an area that we're just starting to look back, look into again and sort of understand where is it that we can make some investments in extension services that go beyond just public extension but also tackle some of the hard questions around public extension. I would also highlight what I think is an area that we need to do more of because this is very catalytic to both the development and delivery of new technology particularly from the private sector and that is around regulatory reform and development. Seed laws, fertilizer laws and biosafety laws in particular have very significant impacts on the transaction costs that companies face in trying to introduce new technologies particularly in a place like Africa where you have very small markets this become, if each country has its own regulatory procedures it becomes a very significant transaction cost that in fact reduces the market size for industry. They're not going to go into three or four countries that may be neighboring and do the exact same regulatory packages all over again and so getting harmonization of regulations, streamlining regulations so they make good scientific sense but don't hinder private sector investment is a key and very scalable investment that the public sector can make and it's an area where I think we have a comparative advantage, one government talking to another about how we can help governments in this arena. I just point to some specific examples around the area of biotech regulations or biosafety regulations. We've been very actively as I've already mentioned in development of GM crops with African and other countries but I think probably from the private sector's advantage probably the most catalytic investments we've made have been around helping put in place regulatory systems working directly with governments. For example, Burkina Faso which is now a commercially growing biotech cotton. Our investment was not at all in the technology. It was helping the government of Burkina Faso put in place the regulatory systems to train their regulators to be able to implement them with all the appropriate cautions. Similarly in Kenya and Uganda, our work around development of regulatory systems has allowed companies to come in to test cotton and maize as commercial products in those countries as well. So I think that's an area where we will be continuing to play an important role in moving technology from the private sector. Lastly, I thought I'd talk a little bit about an area again where I think that there will be growing opportunity for the U.S. to move technology forward both in terms of helping farmers but also in helping the industries that surround the agriculture sector and that is the area of financing. Clearly for at the farm level, the adoption of technology is linked up with the ability of farmers to purchase improved inputs to take the risks associated with adoption of new technology that may not have a high level of confidence in. And so I think we're increasingly looking at ways in which we can use finance as a tool for helping farmers adopt technology at higher rates. Vouchers and subsidies for vouchers as a form of subsidy for accessing improved seeds or fertilizer is a controversial topic, obviously. One we've at AID also have some fairly strong opinions about. But I think there's still a lot of room for innovation in looking at how do we target vouchers as a transitionary tool to help small-scale farmers take the risks associated with adopting technologies that may dramatically enhance productivity but may also have risks associated with that. So a couple of innovative things that we're doing in this arena, we're looking, we've funded a pilot with CIMET, the International Maze and Wheat Center, in Kenya to look at how would we target vouchers for purchasing commercial seed, maize seed, hybrid maize seed. And our motivation for doing this was that Kenya is currently testing a biotech variety of maize that's insect resistant. And that maize variety will only be introduced in hybrids. So the question is, how can we expand use of hybrids in a way that makes this technology available to farmers who don't currently purchase hybrid seeds? And in fact, looking at how you can use vouchers to segment the market very specifically to allow more farmers through the use of vouchers to gain access to this technology. And I think the jury is still out in terms of how vouchers can best target the population of farmers that we're aiming at and not necessarily displace existing commercial markets. Perhaps more importantly, I think some innovative work that we're doing with IFDC and one of our land-grant university projects is looking at linking input subsidies to saving programs. So very specifically looking at the question of how do you transition out of input subsidies? How do you get farmers to take that, hopefully, added productivity boost that they get from use of improved technology, in this case, fertilizers? They make more money. How do you get them to save and invest that money so that they're not dependent on vouchers in future years? And I think that's the kind of targeted use of vouchers that I think we look to play a role in moving forward. We're also very engaged in expanding our work around innovation associated with the use of weather indexed insurance as a tool to help farmers manage some of the risks. Anyone who works in ag research knows that more marginal farmers, smaller-scale, poor farmers are often very technology averse because they need to manage risk over the long haul, risks associated with bad weather conditions in particular. If the rains don't come at the right season, they'd rather have a maize variety that maybe doesn't yield as much but that weathers the drought a little bit better. And we know this from a lot of years of research. So developing weather indexed insurance tools that target smaller-scale, poor farmers. We have two pilots going, one in Peru and one with pastoralist livestock producers in Northern Kenya. Here the public investment around the insurance tool has been in supporting feasibility studies, early product design, collection of the weather data upon which the insurance is indexed, as well as very importantly the training and outreach to producers so that they can understand what an insurance product is. It's actually pretty unintuitive when you stop to think about it that you're going to buy something that you might not get a return from that purchase for several years that you've been paying for it. I think we all know that when we sign off our car insurance and start to wonder why we're paying for that all the time. So that's what the public investment has been around. The actual insurance tools themselves is purely from the private sector. Local insurance and financial institutions actually involved in the marketing and the production of the insurance and international reinsurers have transferred some of the risk away from those smaller national companies that has been important to getting local insurers involved. Already in the case of Northern Kenya it looks like it's a significant success. The demand for the insurance product exceeded the original pilot and industry has gone on to expand their investment in this area without additional investment on our part. So I think that's an important area where we again can take some of the risk off of industry from developing and deploying new technologies in uncertain markets. Looking up the sort of agricultural value chain at the food processing arena, again I think finance is an area that will play a significant role in helping smaller and medium enterprises in Africa invest in technology and the infrastructure necessary to address post harvest loss or food processing or even marketing. We have a couple of new activities in this area, both of which rely on a significant tool the US government has available to it called the Development Credit Authority. This allows us to basically assume some of the risks associated with guaranteeing loans. And as many of you know in the agriculture sector lending is significantly less than in other sectors and it's a significant barrier to development of industries in this arena. So we have a new African agricultural enterprise fund that we have been pulling together with other foundations, Gates and Rockefeller, with J.P. Morgan and the Global Impact Investment Network. We anticipate providing $16 million of debt guarantee to this fund through our Development Credit Authority and hope that that will mobilize and expect it $165 million of private sector financing. So for a relatively small investment on our part we hope to catalyze significant private sector investment that will be particularly important again to developing the industries around agricultural, like things like grain storage, transport, processing and some of the market infrastructure as well. We also are on a smaller scale working with root capital under our Development Credit Authority to invest in smaller and medium scale enterprises, probably smaller industries than under the enterprise fund, specifically around the ag sector as well. So I think that's an area of financing. I think that's an area increasingly we will look to using leverage US expertise and tools such as the Development Credit Authority. And lastly, I would just mention this because it came up in the last panel, we're also increasingly looking at how we can invest in the agricultural and food processing industries in ways that have explicit benefits to nutritional outcomes, thinking beyond sort of the economic growth component of agriculture and looking at nutrition. We just recently signed a memorandum of agreement with General Mills Corporation, actually financed through our PEPFAR program, the HIV AIDS Initiative, between USAID and General Mills, around providing technical assistance to small and medium enterprises in Africa to develop nutritionally enhanced food products, in this case, biscuits. And I think we're looking to do more of that type of activity working with a broader range of both U.S. and international-based food corporations as well as working directly with African corporations around development of specific food products that address nutritional deficiencies. So that's another example. With that, maybe I will open it up for questions. Yep. OK, great. Well, thank you so much for your comments.