Next week I will be joining the Nestlé CSV team on their stand at World Water Week 2010 in Stockholm, on Monday 6 September (11:30 – 13:00 CET) and Tuesday 7 September (09:30 -11:00 CET).

As Country Director of IDE Cambodia, I will be talking about the essential role of water in agriculture and in rural communities. This is from our experience of setting up the Farm Business Advisors Project, for which we won the first ever Nestlé Prize in Creating Shared Value this year.

In Cambodia, where scarce water resources and poor water quality are a pervasive constraint to rural development, we have been using water as a strategic entry point in our programs addressing poverty.

If you are attending World Water Week, please stop by the Nestlé booth to say hello.

Michael Roberts is Country Director of IDE Cambodia. In May 2010, IDE Cambodia was awarded the first Nestlé Prize in Creating Shared Value for its innovative Farm Business Advisor (FBA) project, which aims to improve the living standards of the country’s rural population by increasing agricultural productivity and income. Here, he explains some of the ideas and background behind it…

Agriculture in Cambodia is at a very basic level with some of the lowest yields in the region. Consequently even very simple improvements in the quality of inputs or cultivation practices can have a big impact on productivity. Since the mid-1990s, we have been working to help Cambodian farmers increase their incomes. We began by introducing small-plot irrigation devices like foot powered treadle pumps and low-cost drip irrigation systems.

Incomes improved but even when their water constraint was solved, farmers would quickly run into another wall, which would limit profit. We spent a lot of time listening to them and found that to get the maximum benefit from better water control they needed to be able to access a more integrated package of agricultural inputs and advice.

Originally, we used our staff to deliver these services but then we realised that if a few inputs and a little advice could create significant value for small farmers then there must be a viable business in there somewhere. In 2005, we began to train and support a network of small rural entrepreneurs to become Farm Business Advisors (FBAs), selling a range of products and services to help small-scale farmers improve their farming techniques and income.

The surveys we have conducted with FBA clients demonstrate that on average, their income has increased by about USD 150 per year. This is a significant change in areas where cash income in an average household is only about USD 30 per month. The average monthly income for an FBA is currently about USD 60. This has been increasing month by month but is still too low given the amount of work they do. For now, most FBAs are content with this because of the high value that they place on the training that they receive. In the long-term, we estimate that FBAs will be able to make more than USD 200 per month as their client base, range of products, and experience grows.

IDE differs from the traditional NGO model in that we take a market-based approach to all of our projects. We treat people as customers, not beneficiaries. This simple change in perspective has profound implications on how we work. If I have to convince someone to purchase something, then my success is absolutely dependent on listening to them, understanding them, and responding to their highest priority needs.

This also means that we don’t provide direct subsidies to our customers. If we have done a good job of listening to their needs (including that for affordability) then even very poor people will be able to purchase items that improve their well being.

The Nestlé CSV Prize will help us to expand the current project, adding an additional 36 FBAs toward our ultimate goal of more than 500. We will also be leveraging the Prize to attract additional funding from several donor agencies that are planning substantial investment in the agriculture sector in over the next several years.

Once the project reaches the scale of 500+ FBAs, we expect that the franchise enterprise will be able to operate independently without additional donor funding. As we move from a successful pilot into a scale up phase we expect a number of challenges.

For instance, the FBAs have seen a rapid growth in clients over the past dry season. To ensure that most of these become repeat customers, the FBAs must find the right balance between client numbers and the amount of follow-up service that can be provided to ensure that the clients are successful.

Creating Shared Value is the very heart of this project. FBAs work with their farmer clients to increase agricultural production and improve incomes. If the farmers are successful, the FBAs are successful. If the FBAs are successful, the franchise enterprise is successful. The system flourishes only if there is real value being created at the farm level.

— Michael Roberts, Country Director, IDE Cambodia

It might be the closet sociologist in me, but I have always enjoyed billboards.  I figure that you can learn a lot about a society’s values by what people post on billboards.  I still remember Coca Cola billboards from thirty years back with only a logo and four words, “It’s the real thing”.  More recently, the City Bank billboard in Dhaka: “Money never starts an idea.  It is always the idea with starts the money”.  Or the Airtel India ad: “Go wherever.  Do whatever”.  Or the LG (Life’s Good) ad promoting their LCD TV as “The ultimate seduction.”  Or the Kenya ad promoting a well known whiskey with just two words, “Keep walking.”

Billboards are not always stationary.  The outer walls of buses and trucks make great rolling buses.  “India is great”.  “Horn please”.  “Is prosperity the will of God?”  I liked the truck in South Dakota, “Delivering supply chain solutions to the food industry.”  Nobody has time to read a book on a billboard, whether rolling or not, so the phrases go to be short.

My interest in these writings on the wall has also morphed into a quite a collection of graffiti – sometimes defacing in net impact, sometimes amazingly artistic but mostly always, an expression of something.  Wish I read could these wall art expressions better.

So whether I am on Facebook or roaming rural areas of Africa, I am always on the lookout for what the wall messages are.  Driving by a Ethiopian farmsite, I see a large area of red chili peppers drying for further processing, and on the house, some amazing folk art – a flower, the “lion of Judah”, a coffee pot, a horse and a covered house.  I am pretty sure that hungry people do not have time for art work on their houses, and to me it was a little indication that the occupants at least had the resources to adequately feed themselves.  Food secure, in other words.

When I am invited, I also like to visit the interiors of people’s homes because what they post internally also has clues of their aspirations, celebrations and values.  On a wall inside another Ethiopian home, extremely sparse in terms of possessions, utensils and furniture, the chalked words in Amharic (which I couldn’t read) and some in English which I could, “Without God and life” – almost certainly an expression of basic desires.

In another rural Ethiopian home, a larger drawing of a school child – partially colored in.  Family members dressed in a more modern style.  The “lion of Judah” as the symbol of faith.  A corn stalk with leaves and developing cobs, and carefully colored in, the important wicker basket with the characteristic lid designed to host the daily bread – the enjera.  Give us our daily bread.

So I see lots of stuff on billboards and on wall postings and on signboards and on rolling vehicles.  People are not one-dimensional in terms of their values and expressions and things to say.  Still, I am struck by how often, especially in less well to do communities, I see expressions of hope and desire to be food secure – to daily have the means to access the food we need to survive and prosper.  So it feels good to be working for IDE, an organization dedicated to providing income opportunities for the poor – income opportunities which provide access to the food desired and required.

Al Doerksen
August 2010

In 2006, the World Food Program distributed 4 million metric tons of food to 87.8 million poor people in 78 countries. Consider the carbon footprint of growing 4 million tons of food, transporting it to 78 countries, and transporting, housing and feeding the army of experts who supervise its distribution. Now add the carbon footprint required to regularly distribute food and water to regions in chronic deficit, like China’s Yellow River Basin and India’s Deccan Plateau. In Mumbai alone, 79 water tankers made 222 trips daily this year to deliver water to poor people during the dry season. Add to this the carbon footprint of the $100 billion we spend each year in futile massive development projects, and a picture begins to emerge on the impact of poverty on carbon emissions and climate change.

But the impact of poverty on the environment goes far beyond climate change.

Continue reading here for further interesting, and perhaps contentious, connections Paul makes between poverty and “green.”

What’s wrong with poverty alleviation? Well, nothing really, since there are some one billion or more people below someone’s definition of poverty. Without a doubt, poverty is repugnant and abhorrent, just like starvation and hunger is. It invokes a visceral reaction. The trouble with “poverty alleviation talk” is that it sees the world as 1 billion problem cases, and it is our task to (rid ourselves of the associated shame and guilt of this by setting out to) resolutely solve these billion problems. But it is curious that the beauty industry (probably larger than the aid industry) does not go around promoting programs of “ugliness alleviation.” Surely there must be a billion or more of such to be found too! No, the beauty industry responds to their clients’ aspirations of who they would like to be! The beauty industry does not focus (its promotional efforts) on the deficiencies of their clients but rather appeals to their dreams (I have no view on whether these dreams are legitimate or not). Likewise, IDE’s major program was aptly named “Rural Prosperity Initiative,” not “Rural Poverty Initiative.” We did so because we wanted to work on the “hope” side of our clients’ livelihoods, not the problem case orientation. This is more than nuances or mere words. If you are a poor person and I come to you to alleviate your condition, I have immediately turned that relationship into a somewhat paternalistic one. On the other hand, if you are a poor person, and I come to you to offer an opportunity—a partnership which will chase your aspirations for a better life—that is a fundamentally different approach. So we would rather talk about creating (modest opportunities for) prosperity than poverty….and it is so much more gratifying for all concerned, too.

— Al Doerksen, CEO of IDE

It’s clear that we received so much interest in this initiative as a result of what can be fairly termed a snowball effect occurring in vegetable gardening and small-scale urban farming over the last couple seasons here in the developed world.

On a project level, this year we’re hearing from even more individuals and orgs interested in collaborations with us, whether they be small NGOs in African villages working on entrepreneurship education, foundations in Asia promoting best practices in “Bottom of the Pyramid” BOP design, or larger agricultural concerns looking to give back to the developing countries they source from by supporting more sustainable income generation models we at IDE specialize in.

From this desk, I can definitely say that awareness of, and interest in, our work and model has grown exponentially from last year. The emails and phone calls are streaming in.

So, as a small inspiration for the fast-approaching gardening season here in the US, see below for a few photos from last season showing the grassroots nature of the support for our model of development — from the mountains of Colorado to the Mongolian steppe.

IDE donors at Willow Creek Church in suburban Chicago set up an annual exhibit highlighting agricultural work in Africa.

Tim and Mary Taylor's elk proof, IDE drip-irrigated vegetable beds in the Colorado Mountains

Nick Gruber of Produce Denver packs up some harvested crops grown with IDE drip irrigation for his urban CSA.

Produce Denver's James Hale fills an IDE header bag in the front yard of a client who has given over land to their urban CSA.

Photo courtesy Jeff Chapin (wanderingjefe.blogspot.com)

Though most of our projects are focused on the agricultural value chain, even seemingly unrelated projects like our water and sanitation project in Vietnam can create new, sustainable sources of income for poor rural families.

The Dutch organization IRC – International Water and Sanitation Centre tells the story of Thuy Thanh Ky, a 43 year-old mason in Quang Nam Province, Vietnam. Unable to support his family through farming alone, Thuy started a successful business as a toilet mason, helping meet the increased demand for affordable, effective sanitation in rural Vietnam.

It’s interesting to note that Thuy was not initially chosen by his commune to be part of the group trained by IDE’s project. Not to be deterred, he was able to train himself after coming across IDE’s training manual. What a great example of the way IDE projects often spark rural entrepreneurship even outside of those we are able to directly impact within the original project itself.

Learn more at IRC’s website.

It seems self-evident that we should care about helping 2.4 billion people raise themselves out of poverty. But really, why should we? Most of us working in the field of development fall into that fortunate few: the richest 10 percent of people in the world. Is it altruism alone that motivates us to care about the fates of billions of individuals whose lives we know relatively little about? For some of us, perhaps. But for most, recent history has made it painfully evident that the fates of all nations are connected. As economic institutions and markets have become ever more globally linked, the peace and security of our nation and of all nations are inextricably interwoven. And the widening gaps between the “haves”and the “have nots” are not simply morally questionable—they also lead to greater violence and instability and further economic stagnation. As President Barack Obama cautioned the world in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo, Norway,“Security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive.”

As we slowly recover from the worst economic downturn in nearly a century, we would be wise not to ignore the spectacular opportunities to create jobs and profits and to spur more rapid economic growth by giving birth to dozens of Henry Ford sized new markets that serve 90 percent of the world’s customers. By investing in income-generating enterprises that provide access to basic human needs, we are investing not only in prosperity but also in education, health, and greater global security.

The strategies to get there are surprisingly simple. We need to start by recognizing the enormous market opportunity to create products and services that 90 percent of the world will pay for instead of limiting ourselves to 10 percent of the world’s customers. We need to start treating the poorest of the poor as customers, not as charity cases. We need to listen to those customers to understand their biggest, most pressing needs and build simple, affordable solutions; ones that can be easily maintained and which create profitable businesses for local entrepreneurs. And we need to do so by relying on business models that offer attractive profits to companies and commercial rates of return to investors. Most importantly, we need to galvanize and embrace the self-interest and enterprising spirit inherent in all of us—companies, investors, and poor people.

The most effective way to reach the world’s poorest people and to give them the chance to generate wealth and lift themselves out of poverty is to energize market forces, those same forces that have fueled enormous wealth creation in developed nations for generations.

The time to begin is now.

– Paul Polak, Peggy Reid, and Amy Schefer

The Sakala children with their harvest

Zambia’s rainy season began last week. Maize, tomatoes, and watermelon are being harvested now from Lusaka north to Copperbelt province where IDE trains several farmer groups in best agronomic practices. Tomato prices are down this month, but watermelon are now fetching high prices at market. A couple photos here show some harvest from the Sakala family farm on 20 November 09 outside Kabwe in Central Province. The Sakalas have wisely hedged, planting both tomatoes and watermelon, and Mr. Sakala has an additional field of tomatoes which are timed to harvest in December when tomato demand will be much higher.

Bennett of IDE Zambia helps Harrison Sakala load produce to take to market.

Below is text from AGFUND’s official announcement in Istanbul.

The Arab Gulf Programme for United Nations Development Organizations (AGFUND) announced the winning projects of its International Prize for Pioneering Development Projects, 2009, in the field of Development of Agriculture through Technology, at its meeting, which was held under the chairmanship of HRH Prince Talal Bin Abdul Aziz, AGFUND President, on 14 October 2009, in Istanbul.

The Prize Committee approved three winning projects from among 39 projects from 33 countries on four continents:

The First Category Prize: allocated for “The role of international organizations in supporting the developing countries’ national policies and programs to improve agricultural output through adoption of innovative technology solutions” was won by PRISM (Prosperity Realized Through Irrigation and Smallholder Markets), implemented by IDE – International Development Enterprises in 10 developing countries: Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Myanmar, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Nicaragua.

The AGFUND International Prize is not only a developmental tool for highlighting successful examples and their propagation among peoples, but is also an instance of developmental support introduced by the Arab Gulf Program. The organization of the prize ensures the funds allocated are utilized to further develop winning projects, and to increase the beneficiary categories.

The AGFUND International Prize Committee membership is comprised of a number of renowned world figures, namely: Mrs. Mercedes Menafra de Batly, former First Lady of Uruguay, President of the All for Uruguay Foundation; Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne MEP, Vice President, Foreign Affairs Committee, European Parliment; Dr. Ahmed Mohammed Ali, President of the Islamic Development Bank Group, Professor Muhammad Yunus, Founder and Managing Director of Grameen Bank; Dr. Y. Seyyid Abdulai, former Director General of the OPEC Fund for International Development.

Today the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) announced that, for the first time in human history, more than one billion people worldwide are suffering from hunger. This is a sobering, even frightening statistic. It’s also a dramatic reminder of why IDE’s mission is so important.

IDE’s PRISM methodology confronts the very structural basis of hunger by enabling poor rural households to increase their income through micro-irrigation, high-value crops and better access to the value chain. The increased income allows families to purchase food and to acquire improved inputs for their farm production. The hunger cycle is broken.

Today’s FAO press release has a table listing the main effects of the current economic crises and household responses in five sample countries. Four of the five are places where IDE has programs: Bangladesh, Ghana, Nicaragua and Zambia.

What are the FAO’s recommendations for solving the present crisis? Here is an excerpt:

“In the short term, small‐scale farmers must be given access to indispensable means of production and technologies ‐ such as high‐quality seeds, fertilizers, feed and farming tools and equipments ‐ that will allow them to boost production. … In the medium and long terms, the structural solution to the problem of hunger lies in increasing production particularly in low‐income food deficit countries.”

This is PRISM. This is exactly what IDE does. Let’s get on with it.

— Bruce McCrae, IDE VP/Asia

Entrepreneurial aid schemes should focus on rural businesses as much as urban ones, says Lewis Temple

The Guardian, Wednesday 10 June 2009

Alex Duval Smith describes a “new trend” sweeping the aid scene in Africa to “put money on the continent’s entrepreneurs” (Is trade, not aid, the answer for Africa?, 25 May). I work for a non-profit organisation called International Development Enterprises, which, over the last 28 years, has enabled 17 million rural people in Africa and Asia to work their way out of poverty. IDE designs affordable irrigation tools such as treadle pumps, mass markets these to small farmers through the local private sector, and helps the farmers diversify into cash crops and get their produce to market. So while our approach is getting more attention now, it is not a “new trend” – it has been tried and tested over many years, with measurable results.

The article reports that critics of the Africa Commission’s new $3bn guarantee facility – “an initiative of the Danish government … to mobilise loans for small businesses” – say it will ignore the majority of the Africa’s entrepreneurs, the small farmers, as its “focus on entrepreneurs implies that it will help urban businesses”. I, too, am concerned, not only because 65% of Africa’s population is rural, but because the great majority of extremely poor people depend on agriculture for their income.

Yet the Danish development minister, Ulla Tornaes, is quoted as saying that “farmers need to become businesslike … we cannot dictate to African countries on agriculture”. Why is enabling small farmers to benefit from access to appropriate technology, credit and support “dictating” on agriculture? IDE’s work over nearly three decades demonstrates that even dollar-a-day farmers scraping a living on tiny plots can be entrepreneurial, and should not be ignored by schemes such as this.

I am writing in Ziway, a small Rift valley community three hours’ drive south of the Ethiopian capital. I am here to visit projects and meet small farmers, the people usually worst hit by Ethiopia’s frequent droughts and famines.

Among them is Tadesse Mekuria, a small farmer who has made the journey from poverty to prosperity. He demonstrates the entrepreneurial drive exhibited by many African farmers. A year ago he scraped a living, earning 50p a day as a tailor. He could only grow a little grain on the small plot surrounding his house. When trade was bad he had to accept food handouts from aid agencies.

In December last year, he bought a rope-and-washer pump with a micro-finance loan for £40 through an IDE project. He is now growing onions, pepper, kale and carrot on his 1,000 square metre plot. This has already enabled him to generate £320 in new income, which paid for the loan for the pump many times over. He is planning to buy more land and does not expect to ever have to become a “beneficiary” of charity again.

The “charity” approach to aid is disempowering and disrespectful. Treating people as passive “beneficiaries” has not had a sustainable impact on poverty. Rather, listening to poor people, learning about their lives and investing in viable businesses that respond to their needs has potential in urban and rural Africa.

• Lewis Temple is chief executive of IDE-UK

The focus of this year’s WWD observance is transboundary waters and water sharing opportunities.

IDE’s book, researched and written by Monique Mikhail and Bob Yoder, provides a comprehensive study on the practical implementation of multiple-use water services (or MUS) in Nepal and India.

What is MUS? Basically it’s a concept for low-cost water sharing systems that allow poor rural communities to access clean water for domestic needs and agricultural needs from the same source. MUS used in conjunction with IDE’s micro-irrigation systems allows for production of income-generating, high value crops using half the water that traditional farming methods use.

The book outlines clear ground rules for cooperation on implementing a gravity-fed community system design in the middle hills of Nepal, and discusses the legal, political, financial and institutional barriers and opportunities to scaling up larger MUS systems in India.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can download a PDF copy of the book, “Multiple-Use Water Service Implementation in Nepal and India” here (8MB PDF).

For more on World Water Day, check out the site here.

And, if you’re interested in participating locally, some events are listed by country here.