Event Date: Dec 05, 2012
Time: 09:30 AM to 11:00 AM America/New York
Location: Washington, District of Columbia, United States
Event Links: PDF of Policy Brief
Information
An efficient, dynamic fertilizer industry underpins a strong agricultural sector and a growing economy. Few industries are so vital to farm productivity and food security, yet are so frequently constrained by varying approval standards, unstable government policies, and volatile trade flows.
Despite public policies and investment intended to promote fertilizer use, the distribution and adoption of fertilizer remains low across many developing countries. USAID’s Enabling Agricultural Trade (EAT) Project, partnered with the African Fertilizer & Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) to address this issue through a policy brief that informs policymakers and donors about the conditions necessary to enable a dynamic fertilizer industry that meets farmers’ needs and fosters growth in the agricultural sector.
The brief highlights a series of policy reforms that governments can undertake to enable a more vibrant private sector-led fertilizer industry, and provides examples of both effective and ineffective government activities. The central tenet of this paper is that government policies and investments must support – not control – a dynamic, private sector-led fertilizer industry to promote the safe, sufficient, and sustainable supply of fertilizer.
The brief finds that a strong legal and regulatory framework, coupled with public policies and investments that reduce the cost of finance and trade, mitigate risks for fertilizer suppliers and encourage long-term investments in equipment and in building distribution networks. At the same time, fertilizer demand must be promoted with an integrated approach to increasing the profitable use of fertilizer by farmers through agricultural research, extension services, and linking farmers to output markets.
At this seminar, Maria Wanzala of the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) outlined the findings of the brief; panelists James Oehmke of the USAID Bureau for Food Security, Peter Heffernan of IFDC, and Raymond Hoyum of Advantage International discussed the findings; and EAT’s Amy D’Angelo moderated and engaged the audience in a question and answer session on the topic.
Moderated by the EAT project:
The Enabling Agricultural Trade (EAT) project, funded by USAID, supports the U.S. government’s global efforts to create conditions for agriculture-led growth. USAID established EAT based on substantial academic and field experience suggesting that a sound legal, regulatory, and institutional environment is a pre-requisite to economic growth in the agricultural sector. EAT offers policy analysis and support for the implementation of AgBEE reforms that encourage business start-up and growth across the agricultural sector. Visit our website at www.eatproject.org.
Policy Options to Enable Fertilizer Industry Growth
Maria Wanzala
African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP)
Maria Wanzala an agricultural economist with almost 10 years of experience working on African agricultural policy and market development issues. Her areas of expertise include market assessments, program planning and assessment,... more and policy research and analysis. Wanzala is on secondment to the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (the development agency of the African Union) from IFDC where her work involved agricultural input market assessment and development, proposal writing and project backstopping. She was heavily involved in the preparation of action plans for promoting the development of agricultural input markets in Africa which entailed country level assessments. Her country experiences include Malawi, Tanzania, Madagascar, Angola, Kenya, and Zambia. She has also conducted research work in Mexico. She is currently the Senior Policy Economist in the Program Implementation and Coordination Directorate at NPCA under the Agriculture and Food Security thematic area. Her main responsibilities include: a) Mainstreaming of fertilizer issues into the CAADP implementation process; b) Coordination and Implementation of the NEPAD Agribusiness Strategy (CADAP Pillar 2). Her key activities are: policy research and analysis, program design, and resource mobilization. less
Peter Heffernan
IFDC
Peter J. Heffernan is the director of IFDC’s Research and Development Division. He has 30 years of experience in economic analysis, market research, strategic planning and corporate development. He previously worked with IFDC... more as a corporate and private sector development expert with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Feed the Future initiative. Prior to joining IFDC, Heffernan held several director-level positions with Bunge North America, a vertically integrated food and feed ingredient company. Heffernan also worked for IMC Global, which was one of the world’s leading producers of crop nutrients for the international agricultural community. Heffernan holds a doctorate and master’s degree in agricultural economics from Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture and business economics from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. less
Raymond Hoyum
Advantage International
Raymond Hoyum is President of Advantage International, a global agricultural consulting firm. He has been primarily responsible for directing agricultural marketing programs and communications, as well as, providing a brand... more strategy for domestic and international clients. He has also assisted clients with new product launches, in addition to, providing direction and leadership for global market development. More recently, he has been personally involved in guiding global government agricultural policies. He spent nearly 30 years in the fertilizer industry and was responsible for a wide range of programs, from agronomic support to product development and sales in over 40 countries. Prior to joining the fertilizer industry, he spent 8 years in academia in teaching, research and extension. Hoyum has authored or co-authored over 275 professional papers, technical reports and marketing brochures. He received a BS degree in soil science from the University of Wisconsin, and an MS and PhD in agronomy from Auburn University. less
David Atwood
USAID Bureau for Food Security
David Atwood serves as food security policy advisor in USAID’s Bureau of Food Security. He retired from the Senior Foreign Service with USAID in 2011, having served in a variety of roles managing expert development teams,... more including Director of Africa Bureau’s Sustainable Development Office (2008-11), short-term Deputy Director in Haiti of the USG Office of Earthquake Response Coordination (2010), acting Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Europe and Eurasia Bureau (E&E) (2007-8),and Director of the E&E Office of Democracy, Governance and Social Transition. Earlier positions include long-term assignments in Mali , Bangladesh, and Egypt focused on agricultural development, private sector development and economic policy, as well as earlier AID/Washington assignments in the Africa Bureau and the Global Bureau. Prior to his USAID experience, Atwood served as an employment counselor in Providence, RI and Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic. He holds an MS in National Resource Strategy from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, an MS in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University, and a BA in Anthropology from Brown University. He has written and/or published in the areas of land tenure reform, food security, famine, coalition building to reduce hunger and poverty, and engaging Muslim organizations in development. less
We are now in an era when essentially any development program related to food-chain agriculture must include acknowledgement and accounting for season-to-season climate variability. I would guess that it has caused as much fertilizer response failure as poor usage scheduling (4R and related management practice requirements that were well emphasized in Ray Hoyum’s review). Fertilizer response failures can be critically costly for farmers in many regions and years and result in calls for government intervention. Also well covered by all the briefing speakers is the need for integration of supply-side and demand-side factors for fertilizer ‘growth’ solutions through harmonized balances of government and industry participations in both. The demand-side solutions are mainly derived from agronomic information applied at the user (field) level. It is basic information that is highly transferable and one way the fertilizer industry can take leadership could be by setting up web-based crop ecosystem models for computing yield response probability profiles based on season forecasts and field conditions anywhere in the world. The FDIC has initiated some experience with through DSSAT training. Granted that the models and seasonal forecasts are not ready for ‘insurable’ operation, but prototypes are beginning to appear on both private and public web sites. Certainly USAID programs and projects for building agriculture should contain some effort to assess environmental risks and sustainability at any subject level. Seasonal forecast ‘footprints’ for example are geographically large and in this case model output information would also be valuable for the regional fertilizer distribution logistics across large multi-country areas like are being addressed in Africa. Thank You, Richard Stuff, Consulting Agricultural Climatologist