Submit your video for the Global Agribusiness Video Survey!
Submit your video for the Global Agribusiness Video Survey!
USAID’s EAT project has launched a Global Agribusiness Video Survey, in which women and men from the agricultural sector describe, in their own voices, the challenges they face as they try to meet the needs of a hungrier planet. The Global Agribusiness Video Survey aims to showcase challenges of agribusiness investment and strategies to deal with these challenges, from overregulation and inappropriate taxation to export delays and input monopolies.
The EAT Project wants you to weigh in! If you own or operate an agribusiness dealing with inputs, production, trade, processing, or input/export, the project wants to hear from you. Just shoot a 1-2 minute video and email it to the EAT Project here.
Here are a few key questions to respond to:
- What type of agribusiness do you work with, and what is your role?
- Which government policies or regulations affect your access to markets for your products and/or services?
- What are examples of some good policies, regulations, or other incentives that have encouraged you to increase your investment, or that enabled you to increase revenue or hire more employees?
- What are examples of policies, regulations or market conditions that discouraged your investment (for example, uncertain access to land; constraints on access to new technologies; insufficiently skilled workforce; corruption; poor quality enforcement; unpredictable taxation; government/customs delay; high cost of financing or lack of foreign exchange; poor or costly telecommunications; transportation obstacles, etc.)?
- Which laws or regulations cause the greatest cost, delay, or uncertainty in your business operations?
- What can the government do to make it easier or less risky to increase your investment?
- What impact would these positive reforms have on your business?
Watch this video where women and men from the agricultural sector describe the challenges they face, then submit your video today!
The first round of interviews with agribusiness owners and managers was conducted in Kenya, Tanzania, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Future contributors will be able to film videos on their webcam or cell phone and send them directly to the EAT project. All interviews are available on eatproject.org
Interviewees, which included representatives from multinationals such as Syngenta and OLAM and from local companies and associations such as Wilmar Agro Ltd and the Tanzanian Horticultural Association (TAHA), highlighted major policy constraints on agribusiness. Interviewees raised a number of concerns related to import duties on agricultural supplies that are unavailable domestically, lengthy and expensive licensing procedures for new agricultural technologies, and four- to five-hour waits for trucks at the border that impact the value of perishable agriculture products. One interviewee, Herwig Trettor from Mount Meru Flowers in Tanzania, noted his struggle with import duties after a storm destroyed forty percent of his greenhouse roofs. Due to a complicated import procedure, the company was unable to get replacement materials into the country for three to four months, and the affected greenhouses could not operate.
The Global Agribusiness Video Survey project will continue to run through the life of the EAT project, receiving video contributions from field assignments and through direct web submission. The survey will highlight the human and business impact of agriculture policy in developing countries. For more information, contact Nate Kline, Chief of Party.
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