Agriculture is Agribusiness

Sustainable agribusiness seeks to sustain farmers, resources and communities by promoting farming practices and methods that are profitable, environmentally sound and good for communities. Sustainable agriculture fits into and complements modern agriculture. It rewards the true values of producers and their products. It draws and learns from organic farming. It works on farms large and small, harnessing new technologies and renewing the best practices of the past.

General areas for sustainable inclusive business in agriculture include:

• Blending and collaboration in farming/agribusiness – many efforts exist to make agribusiness sustainable. Collaborating and creating partnerships will only make this impact bigger and change faster.
• Market driven focus is key in growing agribusinesses – what is the need of the market? How does this affect agribusiness ventures? Agribusiness, like any other businesses need to be agile in this. Value addition, cost benefit, technology and consumer information are the key drivers in the agri-market.
• Storage consideration to mitigate post-harvest losses – Food loss occurs at various stages in the value chain, poor distribution channels, poor harvesting methods, grading and storage. Current storage methods are ineffective while effective methods are very costly. There is need for partnerships in storage models that work for businesses.
• Focusing on climate smart technologies for sustainability – with an aim to tackle three main objectives: sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change; and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was also agreed that key players in agri-business need to form relationships and to recognize, create, or act upon opportunities for sustainable agribusiness, share information and seek potential partners to fill industry gaps in access to markets and marketing processes, knowledge platforms for accessibility, finance and resource allocation, & agribusiness logistics.

This workshop was a follow up/ and with insights from the workshop on

ENHANCING FOOD SECURITY AND BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH FOOD WASTE AND LOSS REDUCTION IN A CHANGING CLIMATE.

There are three Key players in Agribusiness;

• The Farmers- should be commercialized
• Professionals – should be Fair players
• Focus on the Youth

The panellists concluded on 4 major opportunity areas

• The narrative must move from farming/agriculture to agribusiness – should be professionalised, franchised and involve business processes.
• Players in the industry must cooperate/partner for change and allow important information to flow.
• Efficient storage systems must be invested in to secure businesses from the cost of food loss