Dr. Joyce Cacho

Consultant: Finance, Agriculture and Food

One person’s opportunity, is another’s risk. From either the public or private investment vantage point, risk is a key factor in the investment decision. Market, weather distribution and political (MWDP) risks tend to shape discussions about investment in agriculture and agroprocessing in developing countries. The uncertainty of production volume and quality, associated with agricultural production has ripple effects on food value-chain investments. By bundling production inputs into the seed, new science and technology tools for agricultural production can markedly reduce production volume uncertainty. The Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mechanism responds to the MWDP group of risks, especially in the developing country context where the common focus to public and private investors is the citizen consumer. PPP’s have increasingly been employed in the health area of neglected diseases of poverty, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and TB. Best practices from experiences in the health industry can contribute to more efficient resource usage in agri-related PPP’s. To date, most PPP efforts in agriculture are limited to the production level. For PPP’s to effectively contribute to economic development, a push to employ the PPP mechanism in commodity and food marketing activities is needed to complement the current trend of PPP’s at the commodity production level. A key component of expanding the PPP’s would be promotion of developing country citizen’s underlying food consumption tastes and preferences, and distribution/logistic segments of the food value chain.

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