On the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that touched the lives of nearly every person on this Earth, we step into a new era - or at least, the opportunity to do so. The past year and a half unveiled no shortage of inadequacies in ‘the system,’ within which lies a complex, intertwined, yet woefully disharmonious mesh of institutions of governance and players in health, finance, technology, and countless others. Status quo fell flat on its face. Convention failed to rise to the challenge. ‘The usual’ could not adapt to newer times. Whether we as a society decide to take the next, arguably long overdue, step to reimagine the economy and the practices that shape it or simply hit the back button to what once was, is in our hands. This call-to-action for change has widely become known as the Great Reset.
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Implementing three new agricultural reform acts in September sparked months-long protests by farmers and farming unions in India. As explained in a Vox interview, the three acts worked to deregulate three different sectors of the farming-trading system, and many farmers felt that the new laws leaves them at the mercy of larger agribusiness and corporations.
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A 2015 FAO fact sheet stated that "low levels of investment in agriculture" in Ghana was partly due to "a lack of technical knowledge on risk assessment and management." Most people in Ghana, especially rural smallholder farmers, do not have a credit history. Without a credit history to look at, lenders are less able to assess lending risk. However, AgroFides sees the potential for psychometric methods to fill this information asymmetry.
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Though female farmers make up a significant portion of farmers globally, they often face barriers that make it substantially more difficult for them to succeed. For one, female farmers are less likely to own the land that they farm on, which makes it more difficult for them to secure loans for investment in their farms. This insecurity of land ownership not only impacts the ability to secure credit, but also makes female farmers less likely to adopt new technologies because of the uncertainty in long-term investment. Female farmers are also often pushed out of planting cash crops, which are seen as more economically productive. Female farmers are less likely to plant cash crops, such as cocoa or oil palms, and have been found to more heavily favor subsistence crops, such as peppers or tomatoes, which are less often considered eligible for credit. Finally, women are often excluded from farmer’s cooperatives.
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A 2019 World Bank brief explains how global population growth, changing dietary preferences, and various climate risks all contribute to “an ever increasing need to invest in agriculture.” So much so that global demand for food is expected to increase 70% by 2050, which will require at least $80 billion of imbursements annually, much of which will need to come from the private sector. However, the 2019 Rural and Agricultural Finance State of the Sector Report, a joint publication by the Mastercard Foundation Rural and Agricultural Finance Learning Lab and ISF Advisors, tells us that there is currently a gross amount of unmet smallholder finance demand.
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