 on partnering with small holders, strategies for food security, and to lead this, Sean DeClean, Vice President of NGARA International is here. Thank you, Sean. How are you? I had heard a lot about Sean DeClean, but I hadn't met him until I had a September, and the world's leading supplier of middle-of-war is extremely impressive. He's deeply involved as a leader in the growth and trade corridors in Southern Africa and in collaborations to promote agricultural investment through entities like the Africa Progress Panel and the World Economic Forum, which is a new vision of agriculture, which is meeting here this week. Please welcome Sean DeClean and his panel. The last time I stood in front of an audience was as Ambassador Quinn was saying at the African Green Revolution Forum in Ghana, which was the first time that Africa had held an event of this scale of nature to look at the whole role of farming and how that could be developed in Africa. So this is a different place, flying over. This was my first time that I had been to Des Moines, so flying over, the plane coming into Des Moines, and you're looking at all this perfect, neatly arranged agriculture was very different to the flight into Ghana. But it's still, I think the synergies and the harmonies between these two events are very powerful and I was very honoured to have the opportunity to be involved here. So joining me on stage are leaders from diverse backgrounds, from the corporate sector, from government, from international organisations, and a farm leader in her own right. And it's fizzing to have this diversity on stage as we discuss partnering on strategies for food security, which at this point in time is of critical importance, particularly as we look at volatility in the global food price and the people that will be most impacted if that has a negative impact will be small holder farmers often in sort of remote parts of the world. Myself, I lived in Malawi for six years and in Africa for 12 years, so this is something I'm very familiar with. Gabriella Cruz is from an 800 hectare family crop and livestock farm. Isabella Cruz and Sister's Farm, which has been in the family for over 100 years. Miss Cruz is the president of the Portuguese Association for Soil Conservation and represented Portuguese farmers at the European Union Commission for eight years. She participated in this week's Global Farmer to Farmer Round Table and yesterday was announced as the winner of the 2010 Clayton Reward for advancing trade and technology for global farmers. Jose Fernandez is the US Assistant Secretary for States, who many of you know has been in the role for I think nine months now, is that right, for Economic Energy and Business Affairs, who oversees State Department's efforts on international trade and investment finance, security, but probably most importantly for this discussion on development of agriculture. And his bureau is very involved in the Future Initiative, which we've heard quite a bit about over the last couple of days and seems to be really gaining momentum. Mr Fernandez himself has legal experience that includes three decades of practice in Latin America, Europe and Africa as economies in those regions have evolved. So if we could just warmly welcome Mr Fernandez. And then until last month, Matt Kistler was the Senior Vice President of Sustainability for Walmart, leading the company's Global Sustainability Strategy and engaging the company's 100,000 suppliers and more than two million associates worldwide towards these goals. He's now the Vice President of Marketing, so has big shoes to step into, but he's a tall guy, so I think he'll do fine. As he continues to work on the company's linkages with diverse food producers throughout the entire value chain. Then Robert Singler, who many of you know, is the Director-General of ERI, the International Rice Research Institute, which is part of one of the flagship centres of CTAIR, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research, which this year is marking its 50th anniversary for taking cutting-edge agricultural research and improved crop and production technologies through to the farm, at all levels internationally. A plant specialist in his own right with experience in the Congo and the Burundi, he's also worked and led programs with CTAIR-Ciat in Colombia prior to leading ERI, which as many of you know, is headquartered in the Philippines. Small holders achieve something significant in terms of food security. This is something that we've been engaged for a long time now, but I think particularly since 2008 there has been a renewed focus on what this means, to engage literally billions of small holder farmers around the world into and bring them comprehensively into the value chain. Has required us to, in many ways, from where I stand, coming from the private sector side of things, is probably an unprecedented level of fine solutions to these partnerships that will engage small holder farmers and take that to scale at a much more significant level. So we're seeing new kinds of partnership models, we're seeing alliances being developed, we're seeing much more engagement between governments, international organisations in the private sector, farmers, both medium, small to large scale farmers and civil society. So just very quickly, we're going to do this in the form of a sort of discussion. I'm not going to ask people to give 10 minute speeches, so just very quickly, I mean, from your representative perspectives, if maybe I could just ask you just in one or two minutes just to say what is it that's changed from the previous decades and how are we going to continue that change in terms of the way we do farming, the way we partner? Well, hello to everybody. I would like to thank the organisation for this formal dialogue and truth about trade and technology association that was invited to be here and share my experience. From my experience with farming, so I've been managing the farm for 20 years and I was brought on a farm so I could see what my parents were doing. The partnership between various associations, farmers, enterprises, research institutes are very important and they are so important that I can give an example of what we did and are doing in my country. At one point we were allowed to grow sugar beet in Portugal. We didn't know the crop, we had no idea to grow it and we were on the hands of the company who bought our produce from our farms. What we did with the association of sugar beet producers was we did an experimental association between the industry and the farmers in order that we could select the best varieties and the best adapted varieties of sugar beet for the country. And it was so successful that in two years we doubled our production. Sometimes I feel a bit sub-feared to say that it's two years because many people might not know why is that. The thing is the industry was pushing us some old varieties. They were wanting. They were not the best performance. So we could bring the experience of Spanish and Italian farmers and the adoption and adaptation of the varieties to our country was much quicker because we had other countries experience with those varieties because they had the same climate and soil conditions. So in two years we started at a very low level. We were doing 35 tons per hectare and in two years we reached what the Spanish and Italians were doing which is 70 tons. That's why it would be so quick. But we had a partnership like this one. Very exciting. I'm going to come back to this but I'm just going to do a quick thing because I think these kinds of examples are very impressive and what's exciting there is also the interaction. This wasn't just done in Portugal as an association with the research institutes and the industry but you were also looking at this from a cross-country perspective as well and sharing that knowledge. But let me ask Matt, I mean Walmart I'm sure you would say they've changed a lot in the last decade what are some of the ways in which you've seen that change significantly? Well first of all, we appreciate the opportunity to be here today. We had our own kind of sustainable agriculture meeting today as well but in the broadest sense, we've been on a journey now in sustainability for about five years and certainly opportunities that we have as a corporation have a true difference. To better serve the more than 200 million people who come through our doors every week is amazing and something we think is a true responsibility that we have as a corporation. We have three basic sustainability goals that we have as a company now integrated globally into every area of the company and those three broad goals are to be supplied 100% by real energy to create zero waste and to sell products that sustain people and the environment Today, we made nine new goals as a corporation that our CEO announced globally. We had about a thousand people in our conference room in Bentonville, Arkansas. We were also webcast into our 15 countries where we have operations and certainly a lot of external media also witnessed our event this morning. We made several. Is the World Food Prize a good company when they webcast the World Food Prize? Absolutely. But we made several commitments today and I'm very pleased that we made nine new commitments around sustainable agriculture and one of those is to source a billion dollars worth of agricultural merchandise from a million small and medium sized farmers globally. But we also backed it up with providing training to more than a million farmers from which we buy from now in many countries including the United States, directly from. And so those are just two of the goals that were made today that I think not only show our commitment but as a corporation, I hope people are starting to realize that sustainability for Walmart, sustainability as a business strategy is a good one. And certainly the value we're seeing not only is financial but obviously too has tremendous environmental and social benefits as well. Just follow on. And listening to this, you're seeing two different sides of the private sector. The small farm, it's not a small farm that you're on, Gabrielle, but you're not on the Iowa scale of farming and then from a Walmart perspective. But from a research institute, this has been something you've probably been wanting to see for a long time happen. Absolutely. I think when we look at your question of what has changed, I think the first thing that comes to my mind is what has not changed. And that is that we still have the vast majority of the world's rice being supplied by very small farmers. We have 200 million rice farms in Asia alone. Now in terms of what has been changing, I think this is extremely exciting from a research institute perspective. And that is we're seeing farmers having access to tools of communication unlike they've ever had before. We've heard a number of speakers over the last couple of days repeatedly bring up the prevalence of cell phone technology. And I think that means of communication is something that will completely revolutionize smallholder production at a global level. We look at, we've heard a lot about seed production and how new seeds can revolutionize production systems around the world. Jeff Riggs mentioned some of our flood tolerant rice that's going out. But I think we have an opportunity now to see the whole way that rice farming and by extension other smallholder agriculture is being managed to be changed. We see today a technology that we're rolling out that will allow farmers to get real time information about what is the best fertilizer to apply on their fields at what time and what formulations. It's only a small step to then see how that with that information they can have access to credit. And again credit coming through a cell phone. That access to credit will crack one of the most difficult nuts in development that we've had in developing countries over the past decade. Going beyond that the crop modeling, geographic information systems that are coming together that can be used in a real time way allow us to begin to imagine a crop insurance program that would allow farmers to participate in the credit markets in a way that would give them a level of power in decision making that they haven't enjoyed before. And of course participating in markets in a way that they have not traditionally been able to participate. That is empowering them with the price information that Mr. Page talked about. So I think that some of you look at how things are changing for smallholders around the world. I think we're on the tip of a revolution that we're just beginning to appreciate. Jose Fernandez from, I mean, we're hearing words like tip of the iceberg or tip of the revolution or, you know, sort of, you know, we're hearing Walmart saying, you know, five years ago they really embarked on a journey. And then now they're talking about, you know, fairly large figures, you know, sourcing from one million smallholder farmers, you know, one billion dollars worth of supplied goods. I mean, the U.S. is also, in its own way, taking a very strong leadership state from a government perspective. And that's been very powerful to watch over the last sort of 12 to 18 months. And so what do you see as the challenges and, you know, the successes that need to be emulated going forward in this whole framework of partnership for smallholder farmers to achieve the sort of scale levels we're talking about. Thank you. And thanks for having me here. Food security is the reason I left the corporate wall to, and I'm very glad to be here. And we're very proud of the steps that we're taking to try and deal with the food security issue. By no means is it a silver bullet, but I think to answer your question, I think there may be four or five differences in what's been done before with what we're doing now. And first of all, focus on the scale. The numbers that countries are pledging to fight food insecurity are unprecedented in the fact that, we're very proud of the fact that the U.S. has pledged to be and a half billion dollars over the next three years and that the rest of the world has pledged 18 billion plus. So that's the scale. This is one important aspect of the future and our strategy that the whole innovation, how we're using technology, how we're trying to leverage partnerships, the fact that it's comprehensive. We're not simply focusing on putting seats on the ground, but we're looking at things such as infrastructure, working on markets, including using cell phone technology, looking at gender issues. The fact that in Africa 70 plus percent of work is on the land. There are women, but they, in many places, cannot own the land. Also, how do you deal with the title issues in these countries? Technology, including ag biotech. All of these are, it's a comprehensive way of addressing the problem. And it's also another part of the strategy, I would say also, is that we're really making sure that the countries are invested in the strategy. They have to be country owned. They have to own it. And that means that some of the steps that we're taking may take a little bit more time to actually be implemented, because one of the things we want to make sure of is that they're owned by the government, that they are partners in this enterprise. And lastly, I think at least from the U.S. side, another different type of, I suppose, is the fact that we're not trying to do everything for everyone we're focusing on. At this point, 20 countries, countries that we believe, we believe would make the most difference, more countries that have taken steps already to take advantage of the help that we can provide, countries like Iran and others in Africa, in Asia, as well as in Latin America. So, I mean, coming back to a point that was made earlier, and I'm going to ask both Robert and Gabriella this, one of the things that struck me in listening to your story just on that sugar beet one, for example, is that there was a very strong link between the research component of it and the industry driving this. And then the link, so you've got a link between the private sector and the industry in that sense, the research and then the farmer and the farmers that you represented. I mean, for both of you, this is a critical link, as I see it, this link between research and the market, between making sure that that link is developed. Is that something that you're seeing growing or that you need to see more emphasis in developing these kinds of partnerships? Well, those kinds of partnerships are very important, especially in my country, because research is getting less and less and more things done. We're facing an enormous crisis and the government is giving very little money to the public research. So what we are trying to do is mainly between the industries and the farmers, our suppliers, and we applied some of the programs which are funded by the European Union and those fund fundamentally the experimentation that the research of some other countries have done. So we don't have much research in our country. What we are trying to do is profiting from the research from other countries to have the same conditions as us, like Spain, Italy, and the United States. In some, like in Austria for example, we tend to use the example and the practices of the United States and South America. But unfortunately now we cannot rely on the Portuguese research. What we can do is tell the market or the industries, we want to do what you want us to do, but we need the support of some institutes abroad, some farmers abroad, and the companies who supply the impulse for us. You see much more virtual partnerships in that sense. This isn't a traditional partnership done in Portugal, developed with Portuguese associations. You're looking much more at a virtual, international type partnership with a very local, specific, tangible result. But from your side, what do you see? Well, I think we've just heard an extremely important point being made and that is the decline of public sector research. We've heard a mantra over the last 20 years or so that the private sector can do everything, but the private sector can do an awful lot. But one of the things that it's not particularly good at is a lot of the innovative research that is pre-competitive. It actually goes out to creating a platform upon which new technologies, new products are built. I think we have to keep in mind that without a vibrant public sector research dimension to our whole overall food security strategy, over the long run we're going to run into trouble. The whole party here at the University of Minnesota has done some outstanding work that's shown that a reduction, a dramatic reduction in public sector research will show up as a drying up pipeline after only about 15 years. So you can have a short-term cut in public spending and research and not see the consequences of that for a decade or more, which is a very dangerous scenario when you put that sort of thing Now I think, now having said that, there is a very important role for the private sector. This is someone who's spent his entire life in the public sector. I'm seeing more and more that there is going to be a much more positive contribution by the private sector in its relationship with the public sector. I think there is a much more mature relationship that allows us now to enter into the kinds of partnerships that were unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago. So Jose Fernandez, I'm going to come back to this point pre-competitive because I come from the private sector, we compete on all levels. I also come from the private sector, I've only been in office for nine months so I feel you're competing. So this notion of pre-competitive where you're seeing companies come together in a more collective alliance around research in the way that Robert is describing this. I mean, there's also a challenge there, I would imagine, for the US government about how it supports the private sector. And traditionally for a lot of the international donors and agencies around the world, there's been a difficulty of having this broader alliance which involves the private sector and in that. But is it possible to have these kinds of pre-competitive dynamic publishers that then, you know, later lead to more market competition issues later on? I think it's critical. I think you have to have them. In fact, one of the things that we're trying to do, one of the reasons why I'm here is I'm trying to find ways to create alliances with the private sector. Because at the end of the day, this cannot be a charitable enterprise. It's got to be a confluence of development and dollar development and profit. That's the only way that I believe we can make something that will be lasting. And so what we're trying to do is to find ways to work with the private sector, to find ways to interest companies to go into some of these markets, to go into Africa, to go to some of these countries. And what I'm seeing so far is actually quite encouraging. I've seen a lot of responses that I've gotten in other industries that would say, well, we're really not interested in going into this part of Africa because there's not much of a market there. Well, the fact of the matter is that at least what I'm hearing from many companies is that, yes, they welcome a partnership, a collaboration with the U.S., with universities, with civil society to try and open some of these markets. And in fact, many of them are already looking at ways to do so. I'm encouraged and I frankly believe it's the only way that this thing's going to work. This is not going to be led. It can be facilitated and maybe galvanized by government, but it cannot be done by government.