Did you know that food value chains in Asia and Africa are going through dramatic changes? Modernization and more effective use of technologies have led to better rural-urban integration and fewer middlemen.
To learn why this matters for financial institutions, audiences joined us for a webinar with Professor Thomas Reardon of Michigan State University. Professor Reardon is a world-renowned expert on food industry transformation with extensive experience in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In this webinar, Reardon discussed opportunities for commercial banks to extend financing to food value chains in these regions.
In the webinar, audiences explored business opportunities for their institutions arising from the transformation of food value chains. Professor Reardon identified segments within value chains where financing needs are substantial and likely to yield the best business results for commercial banks.
Watch the video (49min):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM7r7BYiI0Y&list=UUyo8NnNY4jNwhJ3qPeoSb3Q
speaker: Thomas Reardon, Professor of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, USA
Thomas Reardon is a Professor of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University. He is widely recognized for his work on “supermarket revolution” and the transformation of agrifood value chains in emerging markets, including development of the wholesale market, mills, and cold storage in the rice, horticulture, dairy, and fish sectors. Reardon has also been a personal invitee to the World Economic Forum in Davos and was featured on the front page of the New York Times. Before his current position, Reardon was Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), in Washington DC. From 1984 to 1986, he was Rockefeller Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow attached to IFPRI and also working with ICRISAT in West Africa.
