 Thanks everybody for coming. It's like it's like old Home Week. All right, we're gonna get started. Thank you. We're here to talk about reducing post-harvest loss through market-driven solutions. I want to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for helping make this possible. We've been doing a significant amount of work looking at market-driven solutions of post-harvest loss and there are a number of very thoughtful people here in the room who've helped us with that. But it's a very important topic. We're going to go from 7.5 billion people to 9 billion people. The FAO estimates that a third of food is lost globally. We could feed millions more people and realize the potential of African agriculture without needing to make billions of dollars investments to increase productivity if we could just reduce the amount of food that's currently wasted. The solutions, whether simple to name or complex to achieve, are achievable. But the point is we need to create opportunities to expand food distribution, nutrition, incomes, and food security. And the ultimate solutions are going to be market-driven and rest with the private sector. Donors, the third sector, governments have a significant role to play. But ultimately, solutions are market-driven and rest with the private sector. We have some very, very thoughtful people who have come from all over the world to be with us today. I want to ask my friend CD Glenn to make some keynote remarks from the Rockefeller Foundation to help set the stage and then we'll go to the panel. So without further ado, CD, please come on up. Please welcome CD Glenn. All right. Thanks, Dan. And I want to, before I talk on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation, I wanted to personally thank Dan Rundie for his leadership and partnership on our effort to really look at this issue of waste and spoilage in the food chain. CSIS has been a great partner with us. They brought all of you together, but they also brought together a number of leading food and agriculture companies to Bellagio Italy where the Rockefeller Foundation has a conference facility and center. They also convened another event in the grain belts in Chicago, bringing a number of actors together. And now we're obviously with the movers and shakers of Washington, DC. I'm at home. I used to be one of you, not a mover and a shaker, but I used to be a resident of DC. And now I work in Nairobi, Kenya, and I lead the Foundation's agricultural efforts and an associate director for our regional work. So this issue around post-harvest loss comes from a broader area of interest from the Foundation. I mean, we're always asking ourselves what are the pressing problems in the world and how can we as a 101-year-old Foundation really bring about transformational change? And when we looked at some key issues on how to improve society with the resources that we have and this issue that Dan mentioned, looking at the rapid growth in population, how to feed 9 billion by 2050. Well, a lot of you may be familiar with the Foundation and our work. And if you've ever had a yellow fever card, the person in my job 60 years ago, that's what they funded. And that's what the research they did on. Somebody else in Interol, similar to mine, worked on the Green Revolution in Asia and in Latin America. And now we're asking ourselves, we've done a lot in agriculture, we've done a lot in health. And what are the pressing problems facing society today? Well, this population growth is one thing. So there's an urbanization to play there. But how are we going to basically sustain ourselves with growing numbers of people but drinking numbers of natural resources? And we came at this issue of sort of saying what are the real issues behind that? And food and food systems became really critical to our exploration and to our effort. And when we looked at what we had funded and what everybody sort of funds, if you talk about agriculture development, 95% of all funding for agriculture goes into production. It goes into inputs. It goes into improving crop yields. Can we grow our way out of this problem? Can we just grow more food? We're growing populations to grow more food. When we really analyzed it, when we really analyzed it, we sort of said, we're filling up this production bucket. We're putting more production into this bucket. But guess what? The bucket has massive holes, 30 to 50% holes. The numbers aren't necessarily exact, but they don't need to be. At 30 to 50% loss, none of us are going to enter into a business and sort of say we have 30% leakage every month. So this is what we're telling some of the poorest people on the planet in terms of how they live, their livelihoods and some of the richest people on the planet who earn their money from the agriculture food system. So we sort of said we have a big effort with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa on productivity, but we also see a real need and a real opportunity for this issue of food loss and food waste. And there's two sort of sides to the issue. And you are speaking to the choir on some of this stuff. Food loss and food waste. So from intentionality and conscious choice, all of you at some point in time, because you're all Washington DC city flickers, and we spend a lot of time on planes, and you leave and when you leave, you throw out the things in your fridge because you're going to come back a week later and the food's going to be spoiled, or you go to a restaurant and a nice business meal and you don't want to eat too much because you don't want to, you know, you want to impress the person that you're with. So you leave a little bit on your plate, you know, you throw a little bit away. We all waste food, if you will. And that's sort of the intentionality and conscious choice. But loss is sort of what happens along a value chain where this is unconscious. You're growing for human consumption. Smallholder farmers are growing so it can be sold. And what happens along the value chain has real implications, not only for those farmers, but also for all of us. So one of the things that we looked at this, we said the problem is global, it's highly significant. And it's significant for three real critical reasons. There's a social, whether there's the economic, there's a social there as an environmental. And I like to call that and a lot of people call it sort of the triple bottom line problem but a triple bottom line opportunity. The economics 15% of your productivity. So I'll get a 15% pay cut. You know, no one's raising their hand to do that. But people live every day. That's the reality for five almost 500 million smallholder farmers just because of their their life and their lifestyle and their labor, 15% of all their incomes are lost just because of the inefficiencies in the supply chain. Let's talk about health. We're all talking about how to feed 9 billion, but food and nutritional security. There's one thing about food security. There's another thing about what actually is being lost and what has the highest levels. Well, fruits and vegetables, they have another name. They're called perishables. That tells you that they really are lost in high levels. So the availability of food and nutritious food is lessened because of post harvest loss. And then when you really think about it, okay, we all have, you know, we're all stewards of the environment. When you think about it from the standpoint of when you waste food, when food is lost, it's not only that crop that's lost, it's all the inputs, the water that was used, the land that was used, the improved feeds that were used. There's huge environmental impacts around food waste and food, food loss. And so we sort of said, this is there's something here at the foundation and we brought together and we have for the past 18 months, brought together some of the best and the brightest and who know a lot more than we do and some experts and I'm really proud to see a number of our partners and thought leaders in this audience audience today. So the issue is a global problem, triple bottom line problem, which also can lead to an opportunity. But then we sort of said, well, where should we focus? Well, we said we're going to explore globally and see what's happened in the past, what's happening now. But there's a real interest, interesting combination of events that's happening in Africa. In Africa, if you look at the lost levels of crops, fruits and vegetables, it's there 40% roots and tubers. This is sort of thinking about cassava, if you will, and cereal. So high levels of loss. So there is an impact in Africa, but the numbers aren't that dissimilar than India. There are definitely some similarities that you see in South Asia. But there's also something happening in Africa and you're going to hear from some of my good friends on the panel about the dynamism around Africa and this issue. So the scale of the problem, you can see the numbers. The dynamism really is about rising consumer demand, rising incomes of a billion people on the African continent. And then something that we like to call the retail revolution. And Jonathan Sinai will talk a little bit about that. The rise of supermarkets and different kinds of markets and food systems. So Africa became an area where we said there's a lot of dynamism here, there's a real opportunity, and the challenge is really broad. So this might be an area for us to really talk about what we call intervening, where we might actually operate. Again, to bring about economic impact, social impact, and environmental impact. Let me show you a little bit of how this works. And I don't want to try to go a little bit faster, just because I know we have a great panel. But a supply chain. Farmers, traders, brokers, processors, local market. Not just familiar to anybody here. We did a case study of the mango supply chain in Kenya. And the mangoes are just sort of analogous for any other type of perishable fruit. There's nothing special, if you will, about mangoes. But just to give you some color to sort of this supply chain. So at the smallholder, I mean at the on-farm level, improper harvesting, improper handling. Again, off the top, 45% of what you produced, of what you've been tooling for, can't see in the morning till can't see at night. This is what smallholder farmers do. 45% just because of the on-farm, improper handling, harvesting techniques, and no linkage to market. The next come, this is sort of what a lot of you think about when you think about infrastructure. The traders, the brokers, the collectors. And we see another 5% loss there. So we're already at 50% mangoes. Nutritious, vitamin A. We love mango juice. 50% just at hello almost. And then you keep going at the processor stage, at the consolidator stage. There's sort of very limited loss at that level. It does happen, but it's sort of not insignificant, but not necessarily quantifiable in the same way. But then also, you get to the local market. And this is where some of the things that you've been hearing a lot about, sort of the aesthetic, the cosmetics, especially in the fresh market, where losses, it happens either because of rejects or just because excess supply. Just at that, that market. There may be no market, no onselling. You sell what you can and the rest, you sort of let it spoil. So I wanted to illustrate the example where and how loss occurs along a value chain. And this is a good example. So you look at that number, 60%. And this is not exaggerated. This is evidence-based empirical data went into a value chain in Kenya. And my good friend Makani and her organization TechnoServe does a lot of work in this space. So let me continue. First thing you're going to say is, well, there's some solutions there. I mentioned traders. Let's put it in nice plastic crates or if it's grains, you've all heard about to some extent hermetic storage or storage bags. Or what are metal silos? There's a lot of technology. When we got into this space, we asked ourselves, we have philanthropic risk capital. We can sort of fund our way out of some of these problems. So is this a matter of invention? Do we need to put together a hundred million dollar fund and let's invent new things for post-harvest laws? No. These things exist. These things are here. Mobile processors, heavy-molded plastic crates, storage facilities, they exist. So the real issue isn't about technology, even though technology is one of the solutions. But it's not, there's no silver bullet. And I want to be clear on that. There's no silver bullet. If you get nothing else out of this issue and the panel wouldn't even let it happen, there is no silver bullet. Technology plays a role, but it's not all about technology. The barriers are long, wide, expansive, and we think about them from our standpoint in terms of this limited knowledge of food laws and food solutions. Some of you already have sort of had some eureka moments in the past five minutes of like, oh, wow. You know, so there's an awareness that needs to happen. We sort of frame this as sort of 4A. So the awareness that this issue is there. Again, there's a lot of awareness that happens on the food waste because you start seeing more momentum around eat all of your food, don't waste food, food banks. There's some awareness there, but even smallholder farmers and other value chain actors, they need to be greater, there needs to be greater awareness of what they're doing and how they're doing it. Because again, no one's counting for that loss. Either it's just there because it happened, but the awareness is really key. Then we think about technologies. I mentioned them. Technologies really go to sort of a question of not about creation. It's about access. How do you access those technologies? How are they affordable? You know, there's an acquisition issue. So that's really, really how, where the technology is. And then the affordability comes because you need some financial schemes. This is not traditional, in my view, traditional agriculture where we talk about access to finance. The smallholder farmers don't need a hundred dollars. They need the utilization of this processor at the right time. They need those crates to transfer those mangos to Jonathan's supermarket. The money is just sort of an abler. So there is an affordability issue, but it's sort of financial schemes that put the means of greater production and greater productivity in the hands of smallholder farmers. But at the end of the day, I often talk about this and I say from the Kenya context, you know, we can create a lot of this. We as a foundation and a number of you who represent organizations, we can create access. We can make technology more accessible. We can even make the market more accessible. You know, you can incentivize market actors. We can even make them more affordable. We can, you know, subsidize anything, do something, make it more affordable. But at the end of the day, access, affordability, awareness, all those things are within what I call our sphere of control. What we can't do, and what I often say in Kenya, from an American standpoint, we talk about taking a horse to water, but we can't make it drink. So in the Kenyan context, we can take their cow to water, but we can't make it drink. We can bring the technology to the smallholder farmers, but we can't make them use it. So there's this adoption, and you're going to hear it from our panel members. There's a key piece about adoption. It has to do a lot to do with training and the like. So we sort of have said to ourselves, this is really about systemic change. We as the Rockefeller Foundation are not an actor in the system, but we can help integrate it. We can help integrate these different pieces, and it starts first with what Dan mentioned, the market, market demand, market availability, that's what's going to drive scale, because smallholder farmers are economically rational. If you tell them what to produce, how to produce it, when to produce it, guess what? They're not trying to lose. They're not trying to be state subsistence farmers. This is about, again, awareness of information and knowledge sharing, but if the market is more present, smallholder farmers are looking to do more things. But so you get the market on one side. Let's create that market demand. In Africa, you see a lot of commitments. A lot of you see a lot of commitments to source from Africa to source from smallholder farmers. So we see that. Then on the other side, you see smallholder farmer aggregation. We want to make sure these are linked, because out of many markets, many smallholder farmers can we create one that's going to come through aggregation. So market demand on one end of the book end, smallholder farmer aggregation on the other. Now in the middle is where some of the magic happens, because you see a lot of supply chains that have supply and demand, but there's still loss occurring. And so that's where we know the technology has to come in, the financing has to come in. So we see anything that we deal in this space, we're going to go through an integrated approach like this and really sort of say market demand, smallholder training and aggregation, technology and financing. And so that's where we see ourselves. And in different value chains, we may not have to do the same thing, but we sort of see the integration of these four components as being highly essential to effective change and transformational change. I'm almost done, Dan. So lastly, what we're looking at is who are these actors that we need to incentivize? And why should they do it? So there are tangible benefits for smallholder farmers. If reducing post-harvest loss is the issue, where's the benefit to that? Well, again, smallholder farmers, farmers see economic benefit. Large buyers are seeing smallholders as viable source for their supply, for their growing African markets. You see technology manufacturers having, you know, willing to make and distribute technologies. And then obviously financing and new markets and de-risking and de-risking schemes so that they can basically lend to people who right now seem like they are unlendable if you are people who really couldn't access finance. So we sort of see benefits for almost all the actors in the value chain. So this isn't a development thing. This isn't a donor and this is a system chain thing. Everybody will benefit if we look at reducing post-harvest loss. And on that benefit note, this is really key for us. Again, going back to this triple bottom line framing, it's really about secure livelihoods for enhanced local economic development. It's about food and nutritional security and dietary diversity. And it's about more efficient use of natural resources for stronger ecosystems. So we see, and you can see some of the benefits that come about from this issue of food waste, food loss, who knew that it was such a transfer. If you, if we look at bringing about transformational change in food waste, food loss, and spoilage, this is what we see as what's really possible. And this is why we're so excited to partner with CSIS, partner with number of you, but to share some of our learning and our perspectives. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thanks very much. Great. Well, good. We've got some very thoughtful panelists. I want to first ask Jonathan to start and you've come all the way from Kenya to be with us. You're the CEO, Imagine Director of Uchumi, which is a very successful grocery store chain. Tell us about how you think about this issue from your perspective. Just push the button. Thank you, Dan. Now, they are quite, these are very wide subject. As I had mentioned earlier, it's quite a wide subject and I could talk the whole afternoon until I see everybody's asleep. But I think that is not there the purpose. Now, Uchumi supermarkets is a listed organization operating in four countries. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. And we work very closely with the number of agents, governments, small stakeholders, and as well as farmers directly. And among the things we do is what my good brother here has mentioned perishables. We don't call them perishables. We call them fresh produce because we pick it that the customer wants it when it is totally fresh and it is not frozen. And we play a part in that we try to align interests of those who are doing the job, including the smallest the smallest farmer you would think of in all parts of the countries that we are operating in. Additional to that, we also work with the governments to ensure that their policies, the national policies that they have is supported to ensure that people don't even think that the government is just talking air, but we have a market at the end of it. There is no need of producing vegetables and you don't have anywhere to sell it. So as you produce more than we are there on at the end of it. There is also the ministries of cooperative, the ministry of finance, the ministry of trade, and also the minister of agriculture. So we work very closely. Now I'll give you a few examples because that is just one of them. The other one of course is related to how we work with the customers and the farmers to ensure what they're producing and bringing to the supermarket is still their own and they do not just pass the buck to us and we give and assign the interest of those farmers to take care of the supermarket in terms of an alliance. So they take care of ensuring that the demand for specific branch is actually taken care of even on a Sunday because you just don't go and harvest and then dump it. If there is any loss in that supermarket then I'll take it if it is on my side. If it is of a supply then they take it. If it is another supply of course they have taken it because they mean they have not sold. We have 37 branches in the four countries and we are expected to open approximately 14 more by December. And and we are not talking of the big cities that Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali we are talking of even they're the smaller cities. And that means de-abbanization of those big cities and you have employment of the youth who actually don't have very a lot of interest in terms of agriculture. Now the next thing of course how do we work with other companies? We have for example what you call coffee production. It has been taken by the big organizations but we have gone to take up the smaller branches or the smaller organizations to buy coffee berries directly from the smaller farmers process it and then we give them the market. And to give you the feel of what I mean by these I decided to carry two samples but the two samples are not for sale. I did not declare it to the customs in the U.S. government. So I am if I did that I may end up being behind the bars and that is the kind of thing I'm talking about. You probably will not get it from any other supermarket probably only in Uchumi. And this is a cooperative conglomerate that is buying beans from very small farmers and they do the processing they are all in different colors different shades. Those who love coffee this is grounded because if I bring raw beans again I may not be allowed to not that I had a chance and I'm going to give that to Dan. Thanks a lot. Now the other thing of course that you find is we have other things related to things like fresh produce. To make sure the post harvest losses are reduced we also do our part in terms of converting that as the fruit gets ripe the best place for it if you think of a destructive situation is throwing it in the dustbin but we convert it in juices we convert it into salads and they are hot because we do not even meet the market. You'll find a lot of middle income will come in the supermarket over lunchtime and they buy virtually almost anything that is there. In the past that used to be given to the needed children's home at the loss of the farmer because then they cannot carry what you call spoiled products. As that goes down then you find you have to look for other ways of feeding those children in a different way. Now the other one of course is the kind of MOUs memorandum of understanding that we signed with different authorities Lake Basin Development Authority in Kenya we signed a memorandum two weeks ago where we are taking over their mall and then they are going to increase the production of rice. It's good that Dr. Mima is here who handles about rice. We will get even bigger chunk of rice coming through our supermarket because they are guaranteed the market. That would mean then they pay more attention. The other one in Uganda is dried fruits. My good brother talked about the loss of mangoes. Mango is a season of fruit. As it increases you find you either consume it or destroy it. We have someone who is a small entrepreneur in Uganda who actually is changing it into dried fruits and then we have a market for it and you can have dried fruits of all kinds today all year round and that again plays the part. It's being practical more than anything else. It's not rocket science. The other one is related to things like grain. The grain as it is harvested we have shops within a shop where you have African ladies who have an African market of different flowers be it maize, soga, millet, carrot and then kasavas and you're able to buy it fresh within the supermarket and it is made according to the demand that you have there. We could go on and on and then you find we have quite a number of other things. Among the challenges of course we have is not the high tech technology. It is the simple handling that we are talking about. My brother again has mentioned about the packaging and the carrying. We use our own lorries when we have branches outside the cities we carry that product back with our own bread crates because they are not crushable. But you can imagine when you load mangoes into what you call a barl glory and you all put them in then you find there's a lot of crushing. We have other things that we provide at our own cost but not decided what you call cost is operating cost and these are really related to things like chicken, red chicken that are produced instead of them going bad we have chillas and the rest and we pick them from there. We have eggs as well and providing there what you call the conducive environment how you are able to do that. Now what is there for me? What is there for me is having fresh produce continuously and that is something that probably you'll find our biggest flag as an operator of Uchumi Supermarkets is that if you want fresh produce you get to any Uchumi supermarket. And I would say that is what I would call our distinct competence not the core company the distinct competence we differentiate ourselves from the others. The others are bigger companies that want to buy from biggest farmers but you'll find as you have bigger quantities then you find the standard becomes a bit difficult the quality becomes a bit difficult the smaller it is the better it is and once we have as well the supermarket in every area of the country that we operate in being assigned to fewer suppliers then they are able to take care of it and we take care of it continuously. I can go on and as I said earlier there may not be any limit. Now I said I had two of them. There is somebody who also facilitated my lighting in Washington and this is Jeremy. Jeremy please take this one. At least I can say I didn't re-export now. Now the other one is in Tanzania we have assigned MOU with NSSF National Social Security Fund and we have signed their members to be a suppliers of fresh produce with a return that they also going to give us their premises to open supermarkets. So it is more partnership. What do we do these? It is more to do with aligning interest because when people are coming into our shops and they see their own product then we even get bigger customers and that is where we come to benefit from. Thank you very much. Thank you Jonathan. And thanks for coming all the way from Kenya to be with us and as you can see it's such a creative and compelling speaker and we really appreciate you making the effort to be with us. Thank you. Mima you're the president of the Initiative for Global Development tell us about that but I also think you had a past you were an Africanist in the United States before Africa was cool but you also have worked in the African agribusiness industry for a very long time so you've had multiple careers that you bring to this conversation. Thanks for being here. Thank you Dan. Thank you CD for hosting us also. IGD let's give you two minutes or one minute on what IGD is about and then we'll get to the agri industry. IGD very simply is an international network of business leaders worldwide all looking very much at private sector solutions to poverty alleviation. We're very focused on Africa have a program called Frontier 100 Leaders Program that started 208 when first the African born and bred businesses were really coming up. So we're very proud of having always more than 50% of our business leaders thought leaders coming from the continent on the very simple belief that we think the answers to our own problems and I say always I spend my whole life in Africa are going to come from the African leaders business and political. Myself agri industry that's been less than a year that I started this position as CEO I've spent a little over 20 years I guess since leaving as a U.S. Executive Director of the African Development Bank as a partner and then Chairman of the Shaffer International Group by the Baton Rouge, Louisiana. So the reference we know a little bit about rice we know a lot about sugarcane and we've been operating in Africa over 50 years. What I found interesting in the lessons drawn from that and I'll come in as to what we're doing with IGD is that for sugarcane has traditionally been very much oriented with our growers small farmers outside the core farms. Basically sugarcane doesn't grow feet and it has to go to factory to get processed. There's very little side selling not the case with rice which as we all know paddy can grow feet and disappears. So the real key I want to come back to that example to the whole discussion here of both supporting small holders as well as alleviating the post harvest losses and you're going to keep hearing this word as aligning interests. What does that mean? We come out of process as Shaffer. We build the rice mills we build the sugar mills others do the juicing factories you name it just walk around anywhere you want on the continent maybe not in South Africa just about anywhere else and see what happens to plant and equipment. How many white elephants do you see? Why? Very simply one to be competitive you have to scale on the plant equipment. To scale means you have to have more throughput to get throughput is where you've gotten how to align those interests with your farmers be the small holders the medium your larger farmers it doesn't matter the key is the solution to the to actually post harvest loss is so critically held by that middle group that can be the processors it can be the juicers it could be the the supermarkets the whole point here is the small farmer particularly has to have a reason to want to produce a bumper crop what do you produce a bumper crop if that means literally economic suicide I put it all out at the same time now the more I produce the less I make so one of two things has to happen either I start finding space for my seconds they could be mangoes or particularly the fresh when they become almost perishable when you do something with the seconds and the thirds or if it's you know potatoes or something might have a longer lifeline getting some sort of adapted cold chain facility capacity there so you're selling the potato three months down the line and not three days after the production so for all of these aspects we always say how do we align the interests of those that are in the middle of that value chain farmers and producers aggregators and processors value adders who in effect are to some extent they guarantee and the price because they need the product and then the off takers taking that final product out within that value chain is where all of these and cd referenced it earlier all these various losses occur now we have looked at from again cooperating with with the Rockefeller Foundation at four countries at this point as IGD again always looking at it from the food and beverage industry perspective the private sector companies that say right if we begin to find solutions to levy any power to post harvest losses what does that mean we have more throughput we're more efficient what does it mean the farmers more the product is accepted more money in their pockets very simple seemingly very complex and getting all those pieces to come together and I think in here you know lies lies a secret of trying to figure out where to go and where we as IGD look very much as saying you know what are those private sector solutions that in the end are really going to bring that wealth creation the ability for that small farmer the good small farmer to actually become maybe a big small farmer maybe with luck maybe even a middle-sized farmer why not why shouldn't we I mean this is so critical we cannot have 95 90 percent of people farming and within this value chain is where now we see every obstacle problem is a business solution that becomes a business opportunity so in fact people say if you go from the far the famous farm to fork and you line up a whole bunch of people in the middle does that mean so everybody takes a little bit that end product is more expensive consumer yet no in fact it's going to be less because you're slicing and dicing so well the expertise the competitivity of each side of it as you're going forward that in fact the end product comes out absolutely more cost competitive there was one simple example and I was glad of sexually and you'll speak to a layer of state but he'd be hit right on my rice supply chain and various places can be lost we were asked at one point to look at increasing rice production of East Indonesia and Mali and the very first thing comes out of the ag you know the ag ministry and that well we have you know million hectares we can just to keep expanding I said were you expanding production before you start looking at expanding production after we spend a week there utilizing more water scarce resources why don't you just look at how you're milling simply milling the rice patty and our good redneck cajuns looking at it and said well I mean if we just move from the hard rollers to the rubber rollers in milling the productivity there's a 40 percent savings of broken and lost rice without increasing an inch of production so let us start looking at things all along the way so I think as we think of post harvest losses it needs to be thought of through the whole way it's not just the storage side it's the process side it's all of the handling what happens to I mean a cassava this was very interesting we looked at it in Nigeria and then Ghana very perishable you don't you don't transform it within 24 hours you basically have got a poison on your hands I mean you've got to transform it so the key then becomes and this is where now it's critical to have the industrial company the miller the processor in there and you know so the four things really found a value to the small hoarders that the company is going to offer one they are in essence the guarantor off-taker because I need product I've not seen a cassava mill that's ever had enough cassava and you turn around the cassava farmers I don't have a market well talk to each other the point is it's organized in the market we have absolutely aligned interests so that's one two the expertise that comes in from these companies getting some of that front end input the technical assistance and then a third point there if I need to be milling maize for poultry I need a certain kind of maize don't be bringing me the maize that I can't be using for my poultry mill for the female so but how is the farmer going to know that it's going to know that because we're now stepping in ahead of time offering the right improved seed this is the whole last mile alliance we're working on now in Tanzania with the seed grow with the seed improve people the fertilizer folks are coming it's okay how do we get to that last villager make sure we're getting the crop out the value out our mills are running perfectly how do we get paid back here the key is we're advancing and taking back from the maize that has been also already taken off by us and passed through how do you make sure the maize doesn't grow feet that the very key part I keep saying the folks you just have to integrate into the community the community has to become when the middle is sitting in the middle the very very key is basically you are part of that community that's the only guarantee and then in fact you will see the farmers themselves will start enforcing and we've gone even further into that but having basic community having shareholding in the evaluating processing facilities now it's in their interest to make sure it also comes through so I think with that and maybe the last thing I would just close it out we'll have you know Q&A keep coming back and thinking aligned interests I need product the more product I have the more product I buy from you the more money you have in your pocket the more money I make in the other end with that finished product it's perfectly aligned it's not magic thank you very much thank you Mima Tom thanks for being with us tell us about tell us about AGCO and thanks for and we really appreciate you being here but I lead the GSI group we're a division of AGCO which is a large producer of tractors with brands like Massey Ferguson the division I lead is GSI and we provide solutions to raise chickens and we provide solutions for storage of grain and for I was calling it perishables but I guess I'll call it fresh produce for the moment my job is to help my company make more money and reinvest that money and we do that by providing smart solutions that people will pay for and every time we look at should we invest in the small holders in developing countries it's pretty hard to put a pencil to paper and say we're going to make money it's the right thing to do so by the way we participate in that but we can't do it alone so my role on this panel is to share why I as a private sector person believe we need strong public partner private partnerships we can produce products typically really well we provide products that are good for the small guys and the big guys good for the traders and the processors we can also provide product technologies and know how how to use those products and we're really good once you design that product figuring out ways to take cost out so you can scale it up so we can do that we can also partner with local providers local manufacturers and teach them how to do this work to get the cost down and create employment so everybody wins in that scenario now that's not always easy doing business in the local environment and that's an example of what we can't do and why a partnership is critical for us we can't make an economy a good place to be if there's too much regulation or too much corruption so clearly governments and other folks have roles in that we also one of the most difficult things for us is to create a distribution network that's efficient and effective because I can't afford that I can't go to 10 countries in Africa and put 100 or 200 people on the ground to help build that business but there are partners that do have that like Technoserve and CNFA and FinTrack where we have partnerships on or we're just growing those partnerships they have folks on the ground in the agricultural business for example that we can leverage so that's a really good use now they're non-profit and there's a reason they're non-profit they probably can't make any money doing it so I don't need to replicate that they can do that but finding the right partners and getting that funded is critical and then the third thing that we can't do is the training and the post support again you need people on the ground to do that it takes a lot of people we can provide the content we can train the trainers but we can't do that at the local level so again there are partners that can do that and they're critical and then the final big thing for me that we can't do is provide financing so again there are partners and it's a lot it sounds easy but our products are fixed assets they tend not to be on wheels in the storied side so having a partner or partners that can figure out how to finance that is absolutely critical we've got a little bit of success it's not been an easy road but we appreciate that partnership so I think what's really critical for the private sector folks and the public sector folks whether it's the NGOs or the governments let's figure out what our roles are let's get focused let's not do a lot of talking let's just go out and get some very specific things done get learning build on it build on it I've been in another meeting with Rockefeller Foundation folks and she asked what advice did we have for her and I said picture five years from now what evidence do you need that you're willing to fund first year, second year, third year and let's figure it out the only way we make money is we plan we execute we monitor we track we try not to do a lot of blah blah blah you just get after it and I think that's possible we've got some really cool things going on I think we because of this effort we got into the cold storage business about 18 months ago we're just launching our first product first week of May going into Zambia a couple are going into Egypt by the end of the year there's more opportunities we think we also have some dry storage solutions for the smallholder there's things that the private companies are willing to do again because it's the right thing to do and guess what if we don't then the market's not going to be profitable for me in five years or 10 years or 20 years and no one gets ahead so the partnerships are critical getting stuff done is critical a lot of good transparency and just can do attitude I'd say thank you thanks Tom thank you very much Makani thanks for being with us you're with TechnoServe I think you have a lot of experience working with smaller farmers to make these sorts of helping to connect farmers with markets but also to connect farmers with new technologies and adapting new technologies and practices hello everyone so for those of you who don't know TechnoServe works with enterprising people in the developing world to build competitive farms businesses and industries our focus we've been around since 1968 working primarily in the agricultural sector to support the integration of smallholder farmers into viable markets and value chains we're particularly glad to be a part of this conversation we think focusing on post harvest loss is very important there's been a lot of conversation about increasing productivity increasing volumes but the flip side of it is if you're not capturing the loss then you're not really benefiting from the investments that you're making in the value chains and from the investments that farmers and businesses are making in those value chains so capturing the full benefit of the work that you do must involve a discussion around post harvest loss so we're very excited to be having this dialogue and hope that we can continue to have a forum for sharing our learnings and experiences around this particular topic oh yeah I got more so so I just wanted to give some examples of some of the work that we're doing with farmers just to give some some color to this issue in terms of what we are doing and what we could probably do better going forward so one example is project called Project Nurture that we have worked on with funding from the Gates Foundation and in collaboration with the Coca-Cola Company where we're supporting passion fruit and mango farmers to connect to the supply chain for juice Coca-Cola's juice supply chain and so that involved a pretty elaborate farmer training program to get the farmers to understand the level of quality of production that they needed in order to be a part of this supply chain the quality had to be incredibly high so over a number of planting cycles we were able to aggregate the farmers find access to finance support the direct training and the linkages the market linkages to buyers so that that supply chain could be effectively established and it was a successful project well it has been a successful project we've increased yields by 60% and mango and revenues for farmers specifically increased by 74% for passion fruit yields improved by 122% and revenue increased by 326% so as you can see from those numbers it wasn't just the increase in volume that the farmers had it was also about the increase in quality and also about the reduction in loss but the way these programs have been originally constructed with our donors we measured income and we measure revenue we looked at quality but then the loss piece has to be inferred like the numbers thankfully are big enough that we see it but you're not always going to see it unless you're measuring it specifically so taking a very deliberate measurement approach to post harvest loss and your original design phase and your approach to value chain programming I think is important to be able to see where you really stand on the loss where the loss is happening along the value chain is it you know for us in our case farmers letting mangoes drop from the tree versus having a tree picker that gets you know the mangoes down in time to be able to be transported having the right crates for transport to the supplier so that that mushed on the way to the processor so being able to capture exactly where that loss is happening and making sure that interventions are developed directly to address them can help these projects to even be more powerful and more compelling for smallholder farmers and we're looking at you know for the next phase of this particular project we're moving towards a post harvest loss orientation that we'll try to capture specifically those kinds of those kinds of dynamics but you also have products like we work in cashew for example in both in West Africa and in Southern Africa and cashew is one of those crops where most people think about just the nut but the apple also is valuable and a lot of farmers just let the apple drop because if you don't process it right it's one of those things that can kill you as well so you know being able to know how to process it efficiently is incredibly important and farmers haven't had access to that technology and about how to properly process it but we've started working doing some pilot programs in West Africa to support farmers to transform that cashew into cashew apple dried cashew apple and also into cashew apple juice and coming up with simple cost-effective village-level processing opportunities that allows farmers to get greater value from their overall cashew market so you're not just focusing on the nut you're also looking at by-product processing as a way of maximizing the value of the value chain at different levels I'd also like to mention some of the work that we're doing in staple crops so in Ghana for example we are working with farmers who are planting a number of crops soy, cowpea, rice, maize and for them a lot of the loss happens at harvest so we do work with them extensively on harvest and post-harvest management but that often involves access to technologies like threshers and other mechanization that can help them to not just have to beat the grain on the floor and have things on mats and do sort of manual post-harvest management so supporting the access to mechanization for farmers for a Ghana project in particular has been very important and how are we doing that? We're trying to set up mechanization service centers identify entrepreneurs who are willing to run businesses and who are able to provide those services to large numbers of farmers at a time and linking those mechanization services service centers to producer groups so that you really have an aggregate market that can drive value for the person who is investing in purchasing mechanization equipment but at the same time makes it cost-effective for those farmer groups to be able to access those services so being able to bring together understand what the local practices are what specifically the villagers are doing you know understand why they're doing it and then being able to bring access to mechanization other products closer to them is a part of the solution depending on what part of the value change you're actually in so I think I'm coming up on my five minutes I just want to say sort of more broadly this is a very important work I think we've as techno serve we've been very good at doing farmer training doing the post harvest handling helping farmers to understand what they're losing by maybe doing what they've been doing all these years and what they could gain from changing their habits and we have been able to get very high rates of behavior chain along a number of different value chains but going forward I think what will be important is establishing the business case to engage processors and other actors along the value chain to support farmers in that process farmers can't do it by themselves finance is an important issue access to technologies and services is a part of that issue and farmers can't pay for that up front fully by themselves so finding where they're shared value between other actors in the value chain where they can benefit from reductions in post harvest loss and sharing that business case will be an important part of how we move forward so we see the Rocker Fowler Foundation and other donors as key partners in supporting the development of that business case with different value chain actors and sharing that business case with everyone and sharing that together so that we can help to scale this issue thank you thank you very much I want to get a couple of comments and questions from the audience so I want to hear from Kai Robertson I want to hear from Emmy Simmons and I want to hear from Mizzuo from Sahel Capital so there's Kai Robertson right over there see where I'm pointing there you go she's waving and then you're going to hand it Kai afterwards to Emmy and then you're going to give it we're going to bunch the comments and questions together so go ahead fire away great presentations and I love the diversity this question might apply to all of you I've heard in other forums about post harvest losses that corruption and black markets and the unscrupulous nature of certain transactions may also be an inhibitor of you know or may contribute to post harvest losses and I'm curious to what extent you've seen in your areas of work the barrier of corruption I don't know what else to call it other than that and any solution so question A is to what extent is it really a barrier and B what solutions do you see Emmy no right next door thank you very much and thank you to the panel for kind of hands-on presentations kind of indicating your areas of engagement and interest I also appreciated the emphasis on kind of the soft part the negotiations the information the aligning and MOUs and kind of making making commitments that way but I also heard from Jonathan that it would chew me about chillers and processing and I'm hearing fairly disturbing news from a lot of Africa that infrastructure hard infrastructure power roads collection sites warehousing this kind of stuff is not keeping up with the ambitions that farmers and aggregators have for efficient value change and I wondered if you just comment on because we're here with the World Bank meeting and the African Development Bank folks here you know is the business sector representing their needs to the governments to the African Development Bank to the World Development Bank World Bank strongly enough that these things need to accompany the innovations on the soft side of managing the post-harvest chain that you just that you just talked about thank you and Mizzou on the back row what's the help happen it's come from Nigeria to be with us thanks and more a comment than a question an investor in agribusiness in Nigeria manage a private equity fund focused on SMEs a million dollar to 20 million dollar revenues across all value chains and for us this conversation is particularly important because for companies we invest in processors a key cost component is what they pay for raw materials and if this post-harvest loss issue is addressed it potentially improves the price point for them which they acquire raw materials whatever that crop is and also from an investment perspective to degree the opportunities for us to invest in cold room logistics silos that's also very attractive to us and this is not an issue just focused on crop it also livestock as well we invested in a dairy company a couple months ago and there are losses across the chain so from sourcing of the milk from small nomadic cattle herders how they ensure quality to the plants so that it's not rejected at the factory gates and even when you've now made the dairy product yogurt or whatever the dairy product is how do you ensure it can get to the retailer with minimal losses spoilage especially environment where road networks are not good so it's on on the truck being transported and many of the retail supermarkets will not have adequate cold room facilities to ensure end-to-end cold chain so for this particularly important just from perspective of investments we make and how to enhance value at portfolio companies okay I want to hear from the panel I want you each I'm just going to go down the row I'm going to start with Mccony and we're going to go this way so Mccony it's so conversation about infrastructure corruption and also just just financing more broadly start with you Mccony so on the corruption side I guess are you referring to side selling so products not basically for for input credit products not coming through or interpret how you want sure so I think it is the there is great complexity depending on the value chain in investing at the smallholder farmer level as a business so if you are providing any type of input credit trying to assure that you get the product back you know as Mima was saying you know having that presence in the in the communities is a critical part of trying to make sure that people actually agree to fulfill their contract obligations but depending on what the nature of the product is it can be very complicated so where you are you can have a product that doesn't have a lot of side selling opportunities you know going straight to local food market versus coming to your processing plant you're likely to have greater success with that so take the cassava for example as you know so some companies have issues with cassava farmers holding contracts because cassava incredibly difficult to manage but then if they can't sell it to the to the processor they can always go to the local market and offload it there so trying to put together those those agreements I think can be complicated you do need to build trust you need to have strong relationships and you need to be able to actively manage the risk associated with that so it's not easy but it's been done and it can continue to be done for the for the financing piece I guess that's that's kind of related right so if a business is going to extend itself to give any type of financing to suppliers particularly far away from where their processing is they are taking on that risk that you know there may not be the return on investment that they're looking for so building in sort of a full risk analysis around the dynamics in the market you know where you're getting your supply from how you can engage people and incentivize them to adhere to contracts and how you can make sure that they are wanting to be fully engaged in the business is part of building the business case like we have to understand the market dynamics in order for this to work we can't just impose requirements and think that businesses will just take up the cost or really willing to extend that value chain financing automatically so this has to be a systematic effort I think there's more we have to learn about it but and so I think the donor the public part of the private private partnership is about de-risking some of that testing and linkages process at this stage you want comment on the infrastructure issue comment on infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure is a tough one um we don't do infrastructure ourselves but supporting I mean for supporting transport and whatnot is is obviously an important piece but you have to engage governments at a certain point I think on the infrastructure so it does take a village it does take a government it does take a coalition to really get at all the different pieces let me give you my editorial on infrastructure the same amount of power as produced in the country of Spain and much of the power that's been financed since the year 2000 something like close to 40 percent has been financed by China and the following that is the European Union and we're very the United States is very far behind somewhere instead of the one to five percent range so so we talk about power we talk about infrastructure that's I think an interesting conversation an opportunity perhaps we might frame it that way for the United States to sort of rethink rethink that conversation so Tom over to you quick thing on corruption I mean a goal would be for food to be safe and secure the more secure the food is I feel the less probability for corruption and food can be kept secure through product designs for sure but also standards that are common sense easy to follow standard packaging that does not allow as much stealing and corruption etc but product design certainly at least from my side can be a need to it I'm the infrastructure on collection points to me it's not a product issue I guess I'm going to say the same thing over and over it is an entire value chain issue we can design actually profitably collection point infrastructure but we are not going to do that as a private company very often in markets where we worry about the corruption or whether we have to make the first bet because we need partners that know that local market that we can trust and the donors can be a big part of getting us over the hump because we'll put in our fair share we just can't do it alone for sure and then the cold chain challenges like the dairy that to me is the most fascinating thing from my side I love the idea of figuring out how are we going to do this with so much complexity there's so many variables we have to solve now in our case our first cold our cold solution it's a box that goes out at the first collection point right at post harvest it has solar energy fueled you can also run it off a generator so you know many of these places are going to be without the grid because of the lack of power many cases so what do you do get it solar powered and provide those solutions our next step is to take that product solution and make it workable to put it on a truck and use it in the transport so I think solutions will follow as we get more and more investors willing to invest in it and more and more businesses get involved with the other partnerships Mima quick comment on corruption I want to take the infrastructure and head on on infer I mean on corruption my experience is it's either you get it on the front end the fertilizer the seed you know all of the when the government is controlling the inputs you're going to get all kinds of corruption flat out and I mean the only way to get out of that is really to get it out of government hands in some direct fashion as Nigeria has done to date for example I mean it's you know corruption is a bane to anyone for the needs to operate competitively full stop the other I don't know whether you call it corruption but it's it's certainly bastardized in the markets and that's your famous in French you call it pisters I don't know what you would call in English people run around cash on the barrel buying the cashew for example so we'll make a deal for basically bringing in whatever product that we want to process and off comes the the local intermediary flying around it exactly at harvest time with cash on the barrel to the right I'll take it off your hands right there roadside and that can happen any I mean it happens well it really happens with just about any kind of a crop there and the only way you're going to get around that and that's what I keep saying the processor the value adder has to become part of the community and if they're part of it this very simple story you cite so once guess what next time you're on the contract that's it full stop so I think that that maybe touches a little bit and hang on the on the corruption side on infrastructure and thank you I mean bringing that up and also you know I've involved myself as a director also the something called partnership to con hunger and poverty in Africa where a dozen years ago and we got an executive director here and he's on the board with me we really looked at how do we improve basic investments in agriculture in agriculture investments to find out and it was marketing we're only honest I can control my costs on process I can control the inputs and if we're in the community in the farming what I cannot control is the infrastructure so if that road breaks 14 of my trucks per month rather than you know taking the product to the factory to market obviously I'm not going to be competitive can I as a private company build the road no I cannot myself so the the issue really becomes what is it the private sector can finance or what is it it cannot and let's just be clear that there are certain things we simply as a profit-making sorry I'm an NGO not too so but most of my you know you cannot get a private sector profit-making company do certain things at a loss you can do it at break even you can do it and this is where the creative financing comes in you call them public-private partnerships call them what you want but it's a requirement for the public sector to be able to come through with creative solutions with the private sector to proceed to answers that can be in power that can be and the roads is the most difficult one I mean there are just certain things that I think public budgets have to cover but power certainly would off taking good do privately Tom you're speaking of bins or storage facilities I mean part of it is also to look at the larger facilities as a business I'm a business person now wants to put in the facility I'm going to lease out my space in those bins to go out you're selling me a product I'm the one that's in the middle there making a business out of it to the farmers we are winning by these are the win-wins another one add coming back to Makani and really the role that's also very critical of NGOs in the field and we work with techno serving on gold in fact with the sugar industry and that is there's something again processors can do on a profit-making basis and they're critical because they're the they're the guaranteed off-takers but there is also things that is called the more I have the smaller farmer the more it's labor intensive the more it takes time to train them the more it takes time for them to adopt whatever technologies we're putting in so any help that the private company can get out of software funds development funds patient capital grants from rockfeller you name it the more it makes it interesting as a business opportunity to really get that in so good get the private capital go for the big ticket the capex the factory the warehouse then the mill the juicing factory and then have the the softer funding support that outreach which is a little more labor intensive to really get the small farmers into the value chain John thank you there are quite a number of questions that have been raised I'll start with the corruption corruption is what you define or how you define it because it's very wide very wide and I'll start with a very small farmer or supplier and the first interaction with the authority would be the highway policemen and this is dependent on the kind of truck that they are using and I say this because we have experienced that in the past the next one is to do with counter governments that is the local authorities the third one is to do with the organization like mine to do with the listing of the product all those are reduced by what you call transparency when you have educated the supplier when you are available all the suppliers have my mobile number if there is anybody who does not accept the listing of a product I'll be there there at stop and there shouldn't be anybody who is going to us for a kickback because they know if they do Jonathan is on the other side and I'm going to be for that purpose for that supplier one of the challenges we have is when you have the big boss who is unavailable for the small person when the highway policemen stops that truck again and again that is bringing products to me I'm capable of going to their bosses and saying hold on your men are harassing our suppliers the local government which are the counties particularly in Kenya the farmers are run to those governors and they say hold on we cannot take our products to Nairobi or Derisalamo Uganda because of this and that so I'm not saying we are corruption free but then you can eliminate almost as a goal eliminated to that extent there may be other types of corruptions that you may come across and that is when you're asking for favors but when I deal with the suppliers particularly the fresh produce directly even the lady farmer the lady fish woman will not need to corrupt anybody to bring the fish to my market and I think that is how I would want to put that because we can we can talk about it to you experiences in different ways but information is power if you don't give information to the operators definitely that person who has the custody to enforce law is going to take to to to shortchange you but once you are learned and educated or such then that disappears the other one that was raised by a lady is to do with soft tissues and the issues are mainly negotiation information negotiation is literally open to us particularly in my own organization and the prices of products that we are buying actually depend on the season that the product is being brought and that information is shared with our suppliers directly I will explain to that about that father the other one that has happened particularly in Kenya is the liberalization of mobile phones we have a lot of softwares that will tell the farmer the price of the product in a particular day in any market so I will not be able to have my manager shortchange that supplier you'll find a Nelda lady who is selling mangoes on the highway but she actually has the prices in her mobile and the only thing you can now negotiate with her is transporting it from here 500 miles away to Nairobi will cost me these can you reduce your price on that and that is the kind of empowerment that you're talking about now the other one I wanted to mention here is my own organization works on trust trust is actually our asset is our big ticket and that trust comes from the customer it comes from the supplier if you don't have that transparency in terms of trust then you have lost it so we have quite a big footfall compared to our competition not because of anything else but because of that sign of ownership that is probably something I never learnt in my MBA class and that is the word trust the other one is to do with what was raised here about the infrastructure again it works wonders before I went to 30 to FMCG I went to restructure utility company electricity and one of the big tickets I had in that is to ensure that we have liberalized power supply in the country and rural electrification was one of my KPIs so the more you have electricity the more you'll be able to have harvest losses reduced because people are able to even preserve the product I did not realize it meant anything until I went to Uchumi and I think these are some of the things every developing country you may take it for granted when you're in the developed world but when you come to the other countries you find availability of power and then coming to reliability becomes a big post harvest losses agent now the other one is to do with the roads roads I had mentioned earlier they are great asset we had markets that were totally inaccessible and you would not be able to transport that product during heavy rain season and we are talking of tropical rains when you have done these in terms of Tamaki and then what I would call the network of a road network then it becomes much easier and the transportation becomes very easy to do the maintenance of the machinery becomes also much easier and that also contributes to the post harvest losses reduction warehouses I don't even need to touch we have the chillers a good example is in our own country in Kenya we never used to have fresh fish on the shelf we used to have frozen fish but after we have introduced the chillers and the rest and given access to two ladies that you can bring your fish this is your chiller and then you must ensure you have increased that as part of infrastructure means that you can have fresh fish not pre-pride and not frozen and not pre-dried but actually fresh on a daily basis it's not actually frozen you come at three o'clock you'll not find any fish instead of going to have the fish in the market you have it in the supermarket it's quite a relief to quite a number of consumers the other one is to do with ICT ICT as an infrastructure is very very important and two countries in East Africa that are very good indeed is to do is Rwanda and Kenya once you got the ICT then it means you can actually do quite a lot of other things and people are so literate you'll be surprised even a Maasai who is looking after his cows is actually has got a mobile and he'll be better than anybody in the western world in terms of dealing with it not because of the barcodes or anything but because of the communication and how literal the data to be the other one is how we have to do all these things is putting it into what you call a no-inclusive you cannot afford to exclude any party in what Dr. Mima has said in terms of the supply chain once you leave one then you find there will always be that gap that comes in and you cannot hit your target thank you very much thank you very much Chaka I'm going to ask the panelists to say seated but I'd like my friend Dr. Sanka to come up Dr. Steve Sanka is the director of the ADM Institute for the Prevention of Post-Tarvis Laws is really one of the world's experts on post-tarvis laws I think he's going to provide a very nice way to close this conversation that we've been having Steve the floor is yours okay thank you and it's a pleasure to be here for a time I was a vice chancellor at the University of Illinois where I'm at and there we started the office of sustainability and we worked very closely very passionately with students who were very passionate they were passionate me not so much about things and I learned there that recycling is important so I recycled the notes from the lunch and that's where my notes are and I'm going to end this I'm going to do a little bit of discussion about the panel comments and then I'm going to end with three things that I'll take away that I think are very important out of today's discussion today's meeting now a little bit of history you know concerns about food and food security are not new in the world they've been around for a long time and and when you're old like me you can appreciate remembering when we dealt with these before when we addressed them and in the mid 1970s there's considerable concern about food security some analysts predicted they did a number of scenarios and one there their optimistic scenario was that global famine wouldn't occur until the 1980s that was that was the optimistic scenario and about that time there were a number of world food conferences and one of those world food conferences Henry Kissinger who was then Secretary of State for the United States gave a very very elegant speech about need for food security and one of the things he highlighted was reducing post-harvest loss and in fact there's a if I had a power point I'd show you this paragraph that we and he says the world needs it's our duty to reduce post-harvest loss by 50 percent because we have this tremendous problem of food security it's like in 1975 right right and we did reduce and many parts of what we have reduced post-harvest loss I don't know if we've done 50 percent or not and maybe that's part of the problem is that we don't know but there was a major difference in today's discussion than in that world food conference and when CD started this off he started us off with this problem and he had a power point and he had numbers and big numbers that were lost and big numbers of food not getting to consumers and there was a problem but then who went to there was an opportunity and there was an opportunity to address significantly address societal ambitions societal goals things we have to address as a society around secure livelihoods advancing health and revalue and ecosystems and as we think about post-harvest loss post-harvest loss is difficult it's complex but the opportunity and the things we contribute to as particularly the panelists here on the table address these kind of things we are dealing with worlds great opportunities so a second thing I want to talk about is the phrase investment alignment I teach strategy at the university I can't tell you the number of students I've bored to tears talking about investment alignment as a strategy and so it's really it's really pleasing to me to have folks who are out in the working in that famous real world talking about aligning incentives and the key of aligning incentives because the complexity one of the complexities of post-harvest loss is that value chain and actually I think somebody said this at lunch that if one part fails the entire part can cannot operate effectively and what we're about and what the panelists were about talking about was aligning incentives Mima talked about the processors throughput but then later on something really interesting was the processor being part of the community as a way to make sure those incentives are aligned between the processor and the small holders that is different that is interesting at least to me and I think that's new Jonathan talked about creativity and the opportunities associated with creatively taking waste into new products new demands not easy but aligning the small holders who are providing that product with consumers who want either the dried fruit or the processed fruit and making that work out in a way that provides economic benefits but reduces losses as well Tom talked about public-private partnerships and his is a technology company he talks about it as a product company but it's really a technology company today and it's in its operations and that's what companies like Tom's can bring to the party but they can't enter into these markets without local participation of the private sector participants there as well as NGOs as well as the government and making these real partnerships where their technology capabilities can be effectively utilized in a local context McKaney then Tom reminded us if we're going to have incentives aligned with small holders capacity has to be generated the small holders have to have the capacity to be aligned and she talked about training and she talked about service centers as examples and you know somebody in the panel had to remind us that there's just a lot of hard work out here in these great terms and yet it is important we can want to be aligned but if we don't have the capabilities if one part of our value chain doesn't have the capability to be aligned to take advantage of this incentives we won't be successful so three concepts I'm going to take away from today the first one is about opportunity post harvest loss post harvest loss reduction as an opportunity to contribute to importance societal goals I'm going to repeat them secure livelihoods advancing health revalue and ecosystems second concept is incentive alignment because incentive alignment is how we can overcome the complexities that cause post harvest loss to exist at unacceptably high levels today and then the last word is really from Tom and he says if we're going to get things done we need to get started so that I'll conclude right thanks very much all right thank you all very very much this concludes our session thank you