Roger Thurow: I chose [Banker to the Poor] for the power of the story that [Yunus] tells–the founding of Grameen Bank and the success that it has had and the implications of the whole micro-lending aspect to improve agriculture, to reduce hunger, to advance this green revolution; looking at what he was doing, the importance of making capital available to the very poorest people who need help to get started on the climb out of poverty.

Roger Thurow, impassioned advocate for the eradication of poverty and global hunger, speaks at Opportunity's Fall 2010 Microfinance Conference.

On the cover of my copy there’s an old wooden ladder, and the symbolism of that when you are so poor–for the $1, $2-a-day people, is so important–that ladder to get started and climb out of the poverty they are in. That book helped me understand the importance of microfinance so that the smallholder farmers can access the improved seed varieties, the little amounts of fertilizer they need and can share the risks of farming. Financing and lending is the lifeblood of agriculture for farmers anywhere in the world because you are planting and doing the work before the harvest comes in. You need something to get started. For so long the smallholder farmers of Africa have had very little access to financing, so micro-lending coming to rural areas of Africa has been and is becoming increasingly important.

Interviewer: Where in Africa has this been happening?

Thurow: You see it in a number of countries. Certainly in Malawi, and with Opportunity International Bank–I followed them around in Malawi and saw how important it is for [smallholder] farmers. You’re going to start seeing it in most stable African countries where the government is committed to boosting agriculture–Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and it is starting to spread. Then the next step is the new crop insurance. So, as these farmers are taking these loans, which implies some kind of risk because they’ll have to pay them back when the harvest comes in, they are taking out insurance. So, if there is a drought or something that ruins their crop they have this insurance–again, a financial instrument that has long been available to most farmers in the world. To have that kind of insurance to go along with the micro-lending then shares the risk, so you take the loan, you plant the better seeds, you use the fertiliser and then if something happens and the crop fails you have insurance to pay it back. The micro-lenders are introducing this insurance themselves because it’s also protection for them.

About Roger Thurow

Thurow is Senior Fellow for Global Agriculture & Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and he writes the blog series Outrage & Inspire on the Council’s Global Food for Thought blog. Thurow was a finalist for the 2004 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting, and co-author of the book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. Thurow was a plenary session speaker at Opportunity’s Fall 2010 Microfinance Conference in Washington, D.C.

Thurow will be a special guest speaker at the Opportunity Breakfast for Tanzania event next week, Wednesday, May 4th. All are welcome. Buy tickets at opportunity.org/bosbreak »

Lutacho, Kenya

I returned from a day in the field with Kenyan smallholder farmers last week to find these words from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack as the Newsbrief’s Quote of the Week:

As I travel around the world talking about American agriculture, the one thing that has struck me is how jealous the rest of the world is about extension, how they would love to have the capacity that we have in this country and often, unfortunately, take for granted, of the ability to reach out and gain very useful information and insights to improve productivity.

Exactly, I thought.

Roger Thurow, Global Food for Thought Blog

How the African farmers I had just visited cherished extension services that would bring to them the latest in technology and advice on how to best use it to increase food production. Extension agents were essential in spreading the agricultural revolutions in every part of the world: America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America. Everywhere except Africa. Government budgets didn’t have enough money to fund them, nor political will to insist that they do; international development agencies, in their negligence of agriculture, thought Africa, alone among the continents of the world, could do without them. As a result, the continent’s extension services fell into a woeful state during the past three decades of neglect of agriculture development. In many countries, if there were any extension agents, they did little extending; very few even had bicycles to go from farm to farm.

Secretary Vilsack’s quote continued:

We are trying to replicate that around the world. For global supplies to keep pace with global demands originating in emerging markets and to mitigate price volatility, we have got to embrace proven technologies, and extension can help us do that. It’s not just biotechnology. It’s also conservation tillage. It’s drip irrigation. It’s multiple cropping practices.

It’s planting seeds, one per hole. And spacing the seeds, and the rows, so the seeds will have room to grow without competition from other seeds for water, sun and soil nutrients.

It’s very basic knowledge like this, common practices among backyard gardeners everywhere in the rich world. But it was news to the farmers of western Kenya when Kennedy Wafula came by their farms with advice on how to plant to get better harvests.

He produced a piece of string with a knot tied every 25 centimeters. “Twenty-five. This is the distance between plants,” he told a group of farmers gathered under a big shade tree. “How far?”

“Twenty-five,” they shouted in unison.

He waved a stick that was 75 centimeters long. “Seventy-five,” Kennedy said. “That is the distance between rows.”

Thurow at the Fall 2010 Microfinance Conference.

“Seventy-five,” the farmers repeated.

Kennedy explained, “You dig a hole every 25 centimeters and put in one seed. Only one seed, so there is no competition between many seeds for the fertilizer and water and sun.”

Kennedy led the farmers to a small plot of land to practice the measuring and the preparation. As farmer Geoffrey Sitata followed, I asked him how he traditionally planted. “No measurement, we just scatter the seed,” he said. He made a motion with his right hand, as if throwing dice or tossing feed to chickens. That’s how he planted, scattering a fistful of precious seed willy-nilly. That’s how everybody planted. Nobody had ever come by the farm and told them there was a better, more productive way to do it.

Until Kennedy, a field manager for the One Acre Fund, stopped by. The One Acre Fund is an organization founded by American social entrepreneurs that works with 55,000 farm families in Kenya and Rwanda. One Acre’s main mission is to distribute to Africa’s farmers the simple technology and practical advice that have existed for decades but nobody ever bothered to deliver to African smallholder farmers. The result is that African yields for maize, wheat, rice and other staple crops lag far behind yields in the rich world. And that hunger and malnutrition blanket the African countryside. One Acre farmers are typically able to double or triple maize yields in one year.

Kennedy calls One Acre’s simple sequence of planting practices the “Obama method,” for the American president who is highly revered in western Kenya, where Barack Obama’s father grew up on a small farm. It is also appropriate in another way, for President Obama has made ending hunger through agriculture development a prime pillar of his foreign policy. His Feed the Future Initiative especially seeks to help Africa’s smallholder farmers by creating the conditions for them to be as productive as possible to feed their families, their communities and their countries.

Secretary Vilsack continued to tell those gathered at the USDA Forum in Washington [on Feb. 24, 2011]:

There are a variety of ways in which we can help the world do a better job of providing food to a growing population. So there are serious opportunities here for the United States to provide leadership, and we are prepared to do that.

Extending the knowledge of successful agriculture practices is one of those opportunities. Kenyan farmers often tell me, “Knowledge is power.” That is one form of power Africa is happy to see the U.S. wield.

Roger Thurow at Opportunity’s Microfinance Conference:

Opportunity Rwanda client Marie Grave Byukusege sells produce in the market in Rwamagana.

This week, Roger Thurow, Senior Fellow on Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, posted a blog reporting on an unusual situation for farmers in Kirehe, Rwanda — an agricultural surplus. Thurow examines the situation, interviewing Agnes Kalibata, Rwanda’s minister of agriculture, and discusses the positive impact of USAID’s Feed the Future initiative as well as the need for continued momentum and perseverance by farmers in Rwanda in the face of a recent agricultural surplus. (Thurow’s piece, “Keeping up the Momentum,” is part of a weekly series called Outrage and Inspire that he writes for Global Food for Thought, the blog for the Global Agricultural Development Initiative.)

Since 2007, when Rwanda’s President Kagame refocused his efforts on permanently eliminating hunger in his country, spending on agriculture development has increased to about 7% of its budget from less than 3%, according to Minister Kalibata. And while two-thirds of the country’s districts were below daily food requirements then, today, there are none.

While this effort led to a much-needed increase in production, it also brought on new problems. Prices were falling and there was the potential for food spoilage. Farmers’ enthusiasm and motivation were waning. They needed markets for their produce right away. Says Minister Kalibata, “‘We have the food, but we have no post-harvest network. When you talk about gaining food security without putting these other things into place, it’s wishful thinking.’”

In the effort to keep up momentum and enthusiasm among farmers, Kalibata says she welcomes the help of the Feed the Future initiative, the Obama administration’s effort to end hunger through agriculture development. Feed the Future invests in post-harvest infrastructure — post-harvest losses in Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa can run as high as 30% to 50% of production.

Opportunity is also responding to these needs of farmers in Rwanda and all over sub-Saharan Africa. Our agriculture finance program strives to connect smallholder farmers with markets for their harvests. Through a grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the MasterCard Foundation, Opportunity will develop strategic partnerships with extension service providers to equip farmers with training and market linkages that can help to improve crop productivity and household income. It is also providing 90,000 smallholder farmers in Africa with access to financial services, including savings products and weather index crop insurance to protect their assets.

As Roger Thurow highlights in his post, when it comes to solving global hunger, it is not only production that’s needed, but an infrastructure that allows for a way to ensure financial security through that produce as well. After all, asks Minister Kalibata, “How can I tell the farmers to plant more maize? Unless we sell this, how can we get them to grow more? That’s the challenge of creating food security.”

Click here to read Thurow’s full article on the blog Global Food for Thought.

Writer and agricultural expert Roger Thurow is co-author of the author of the book, ENOUGH: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty. He will be a featured speaker at Opportunity’s Microfinance Conference in Washington, D.C. on October 8-9, 2010. To attend the conference, and meet many more experts in agriculture, microfinance and international development, visit our conference information page.

Roger Thurow spoke to a packed plenary session this morning in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Roger Thurow’s job is to “outrage and inspire.” His recent book, co-authored with Scott Kilman, Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty, certainly does just that.

He previously spoke at our Fall 2009 Conference, and Opportunity is delighted to host him again at our Spring 2010 Conference. The Opportunity audience sat enraptured as we listened to his story today.

Thurow’s three decades at The Wall Street Journal lead him to Europe and Africa. While in Africa, he wrote a series of stories on famine in Africa that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in International Reporting. Along with Scott Kilman, Roger Thurow reported on humanitarian and development issues.

They received much recognition for their book: they were honored by the United Nations and were awarded the Action Against Hunger’s Humanitarian Award. Thurow now serves as a Senior Fellow on Global Agriculture and Food Policy at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. It is no wonder that he was one of the conference’s most-anticipated speakers.

In keeping with the conference theme, he self-identifies as a journalist, and a gatherer of stories.

“The best way to reduce poverty in the very poorest of nations is by focusing on the small farmers, and creating the conditions for the small farmers to be as productive as possible.” he begins. “They will then have enough food to feed themseleves, feed their families, feed their nations, and maybe even have a surplus.”

When he first went to Africa, and saw the massive famine that Etheopia was experiencing, he testifies that ”what I saw became a disease in my soul.” This disease would not allow him to rest until he shared the story with the rest of the world. That story became the bestselling book Enough.

“Opportunity International is so crucial,” he says. ”It’s all about the power of the individual. Ending hunger can indeed be the singular greatest achievement in our generation.” He wrote about Opportunity’s work in Malawi in the book, sharing the story of Africa Board Chair Francis Pelekamoyo’s leadership in delivering innovative solutions to Africa’s poorest entrepreneurs.

“Hooray for the efforts of Opportunity International and crop insurance,” he emphasizes. We will hear more about the Agriculture Finance program later on in the program.

To keep up with Roger Thurow, check out his blog. You can also learn more about how hunger can be conquered in his recent article in Christianity Today, available here.

Opportunity International is working to equip countries to be agriculturally self-sustainable through microfinance.

There is a green revolution occurring in the developing world led by passionate individuals with a heart for change. Within this revolution, Opportunity International is equipping nations to do something radical–to feed themselves.

In honor of www.blogactionday.org, I would like to introduce Lucas Chingore. Lucas is a farmer in Mozambique. His desire was to farm on a plot of land just outside of town. But his goal was always out of reach. He did not have the financial services that he needed to succeed. Finally, he found Opportunity International and his farm took root. He received a loan for an irrigation pump that brought precious water to his crops and greatly enhanced his yield. Another loan allowed him to diversify into poultry so that hundreds of chickens now populate his fields. And he opened an Opportunity savings account to protect his business profits and earn interest.

Lucas is now feeding his family, his community and his nation, thanks to a loan from Opportunity.

Two-thirds of the sub-Saharan Africa labor force is employed in agriculture. With this in mind, Opportunity institutions in eight African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda) are committed to addressing the issue of food security. Opportunity plans to solve this great agricultural conundrum through the success of people like Lucas.

The issue of food sustainability is not a new issue. It is, however, one of the most pressing problems in the developing world. With the global food crisis still a battle that the poor face daily, Opportunity International recognized the need for a long-term solution to this chronic problem.

Using technology, Opportunity has pioneered crop insurance that mitigates weather problems in farming. Using education, Opportunity is teaching farmers about the true market value of their crops. Using savings products, Opportunity is allowing farmers to manage their cash flow. Using new seeds, Opportunity is helping farmers to increase crop yields and decrease risk.

As Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman insist in Enough, this is a problem that can only be solved by creativity and commitment. Opportunity International has become a champion of the farming poor. And in doing so, Opportunity has equipped nations to feed themselves.

To read more about Lucas’ story, click here. To learn more about Blog Action Day and the topic of climate change, go to www.blogactionday.org.

Roger Thurow's intent was to outrage and inspire at the Oportunity Board of Governor's Conference.

Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman’s  compelling book Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty tells the story of the world’s food. It raises the question of supply and demand, which is easy to understand even if you were not an economics major. There is enough food to feed everyone in the world. There are enough people to ensure that food gets produced and distributed. Then why are there people living with nothing?

Thurow’s intent is to outrage, and to inspire. His goal is audacious, but exciting.

Roger Thurow greeted the Oportunity Board of Governor’s Conference attendees with his own story: hunger seized his soul when he looked into the eyes of a starving child in Ethopia. Thurow speaks with great passion, full of zeal. He has walked among those starving in Africa when there was a warehouse full of food just down the road. He has seen the bumper crops that farmers produce one year but then the famine they endure the next year. The story he presents is a heartbreaking one, full of contrasts.

When I hear about disparities such as this, I generally grow discouraged. Not this time.

“There are 25,000 people dying every day of hunger-related illnesses. And it doesn’t have to happen,” he emphasizes.

There are people and organizations that are making a difference in food security. Opportunity is introducing crop insurance to mitigate weather risk. Seeing the need for rural lending, Opportunity is making loans to farmers. And Opportunity is working alongside governments to start to make a difference in the area of food scarcity.

“Hunger is one of the great problems of the world that can be solved,” he says. “Opportunity has a great abundance of concrete examples and inspiring leaders, like Francis Pelekamoyo…. When I first met him, Francis was finding his life’s worth in small acts that were impacting the lives of Malawian farmers.”

Thurow spotlights Opportunity’s own Francis Pelekamoyo with great reverence in Enough. He is a man that left a high-powered career as the Head of the Central Bank of Malawi to work with Opportunity International. Francis is now Opportunity’s board chair for Opportunity’s banks in Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sought Africa, and Kenya.

Thanks, Roger Thorow, for outraging and inspiring the Opportunity International Board of Governors!