Agriculture and Entrepreneurship: Creating a Way Forward

AGRIPRENEURSHIP: A PATH TO THE FUTURE Agriculture and Entrepreneurship: Creating a Way Forward Presenter: Keegan Kautzky. Director of Global Programs and Partnerships, The World Food Prize Foundation Transcript [TEXT: Young African Leaders Initiative, Online Training Series] [TEXT: Keegan Kautzky, Director of Global Programs and Partnership, World Food Prize Foundation] My name is Keegan Kautzky. I’m the director of global education programs at the World Food Prize Foundation, which is often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.” [TEXT: Agripreneurship, A Path to the Future: Agriculture and Entrepreneurship, Creating a Way Forward] Welcome to Agripreneurship: A Path to the Future. This lesson is “Agriculture and Entrepreneurship: Creating a Way Forward.” In this lesson, we will review what we mean when we talk about agriculture and the importance of a strong agricultural sector. We’ll talk about food security and its benefits to society. We will look at the key challenges in agriculture. And we’ll explore the role that young professionals can play in advancing the agricultural economy. I grew up on a diversified family farm in Iowa, a predominantly rural agricultural state in the midwest United States. On our farm, we grew corn and soybeans and raised purebred cattle, pigs and chickens. Throughout college and graduate school, I studied rural sociology and political science, development economics and public health, but always with a focus on food security, agricultural systems, rural livelihoods and youth empowerment. I worked in Malawi with women farmers on agroforestry and other sustainable agriculture practices.I spent five years working with rural families in South Africa, Mozambique and Botswana to better understand ways to improve their food security. Now, at the World Food Prize, I have the opportunity to work with over 10,000 young leaders around the world every year to help them solve the world’s greatest challenges through agriculture, innovation and entrepreneurship. What is agriculture and why does it matter? Agriculture is the art and science of cultivating the soil, growing crops and raising livestock, processing and preparing plant and animal products and then getting them to market. Agriculture is essential to life. It provides the food that nourishes our bodies; the feed and fodder for our animals; the fiber that clothes, houses and protects us; the fuel that heats our homes, cooks our food and powers our industry; and the products that build our communities and grow our economy. Agriculture is far more than farming. It’s business. It’s science. It’s engineering. It’s energy. It’s information. It’s health care. It’s technology. Agriculture is the driver of the African economy today. According to the African Development Bank, it is the leading employer and the primary source of income for most African families. The last 50 years have been the greatest period of agricultural innovation, food production and hunger reduction in all of human history. And many of the most critical innovations and advances have come from Africa. African scientists have developed crops to boost vitamin intake and prevent blindness in children. Public and private partnerships have been forged to provide mobile, digital access to rural farmers, enabling them new opportunities to access farm inputs, credit, banking and markets. Advances in the agricultural economy have been at the heart of that success, and in the last 20 years alone, they have helped cut extreme poverty in half, reduce child mortality by 50 percent, and save the lives of over 120 million children. Agricultural development has helped over 200 million people lift themselves out of poverty. It’s helped increase household incomes, improve nutrition, and increase access to education, better housing, improved sanitation and health care. In Africa alone, it has helped increase life expectancy by more than 10 years since 2000. Society cannot advance without food security and a strong agricultural sector. But it isn’t about looking at the past. In the next 50 years, the innovators and the entrepreneurs who will change the world will do it through agriculture. It’ll be an engineer who develops an affordable way to desalinize ocean water and help 2 billion people access safe, clean drinking water; an entomologist who finds a way to stop malaria and saves 300 million lives; a plant breeder who develops disease-resistant, drought-tolerant and more nutritious crops who will help end malnutrition once and for all; a veterinarian who prevents the spread of avian influenza and saves the lives of tens of millions of chickens, ducks and geese; a geneticist who shows us how to produce meat in a petri dish and grow lifesaving medicines in the food we eat every day; or a data programmer who uses artificial intelligence to advance the field of precision agriculture and develop drones to plant our fields, water our crops, weed our gardens, and harvest our food safely and sustainably. What is food security and how does it benefit society? Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The three essentials are quality (safe, healthy and nutritious food that meets our physical needs and cultural preferences), quantity (every person has enough at all times to lead a healthy and active lifestyle), and availability to afford and access the food where you live. In sub-Saharan Africa, food insecurity affects over 27 percent of the population. That’s almost four times any other region of the world. It leads to illness, stunted growth and learning disabilities and results in the deaths of approximately 3 million children each year. As Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, said, “Food is a moral right of all who are born on this earth.” What are the key challenges facing those in agriculture? People are living longer, healthier lives. Fewer mothers are dying in childbirth, and fewer children are dying before the age of 5 from preventable illnesses. They have better access to nutrition, to clean water, sanitation and health care, and, as a result, our global population is expected to keep growing until it reaches equilibrium at around 10 billion and then begins to decline. This growth in the world’s population is a significant challenge, as it’s expected to increase demand for food by nearly 60 percent. In other words, we will need to produce and distribute as much food in the next 30 years as we have produced in the last 10,000 years combined. And we’ll have to do it in a way that is not just sustainable, but also efficient and fair. But it isn’t just about increasing production. We already produce almost twice what our population needs. Food insecurity is primarily a problem of distribution and access. By reducing post-harvest loss and waste, we would increase the global food supply by over 30 percent, and improvements in gender equality and legal and economic opportunities for women could reduce food insecurity by approximately 15 percent, meeting much of that increased demand. The most common institutional barriers facing individuals engaged in agriculture today include a lack of access to capital and financing, land ownership, education and technical training, improved technologies and better practices, and insurance against loss, among others. In Africa, these systemic challenges are often compounded by several other factors, including water scarcity; climate volatility; rapid urbanization and migration; evolving plant and animal diseases; transitions in the human disease burden; soil erosion; discriminatory legal, political, economic and social barriers for women and girls; and a lack of reliable energy sources. As the Sustainable Development Goals envision, a strong agricultural sector will produce “a country that is free from hunger, malnutrition and extreme poverty, where thriving local economies generate increased income for all people; where people consume balanced and nutritious diets, and children grow up healthy, able to reach their full potential; where resilient households and communities face fewer and less severe shocks, have less vulnerability to the shocks they do face, and are helping to accelerate inclusive, sustainable economic growth.” Farming is a business. And every farmer is a CEO, a scientist, a manager, a market analyst, a transportation logistics specialist, an engineer, a data officer, a human resource manager, a bookkeeper and accountant, a sales representative. And at the same time, they are often also the skilled laborer who repairs and operates the equipment; feeds and cares for the livestock; plants, harvests and processes the crops; and oversees the day-to-day operations of their household. Whether they are managing operations on a hundred thousand hectares or on a half a hectare of land, the real-world experience and professional skills they are developing are incredibly valuable and critical to a country’s prosperous future. How can young professionals play an active role in advancing the agricultural economy? Today, more than 60 percent of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 25, and Africa’s youth population is expected to double by 2050. Unfortunately, job creation is unable to keep pace with the rapid rise in the African workforce, and there are almost 8 million more young people entering the labor market each year than there are available job opportunities. As a result, less than one-quarter of young people entering the job market will find paid formal-sector employment. To succeed in this challenging environment, young professionals will have to be entrepreneurial and be able to identify new business opportunities. You’ll need to understand the challenges facing your country as you seek to innovate and invent, to develop a new product, to provide a service, to develop a niche market, to adopt a new technology, to add value to the supply chain, and to create your own job. With global demand for agricultural and food products on the rise as a result of population growth, urbanization, income growth, an expanding middle class and changing diets, there are incredible opportunities all across the food supply chain to find where you fit.