The formation of this consortium and the Seed 2 Feed Conference, held in Delft today, are both initiatives that result from Rabobank's vision on Food & Agribusiness. Rabobank sees it as a part of their responsibility to help the Food & Agribusiness industry contribute to sustainable solutions for the world food challenges. In fact, Food & Agribusiness (F&A) chains can only be transformed into sustainable value chains if all parties - including banks, customers, members and stakeholders - join forces. The formation of this consortium will pursue a sustainable impact on world food security by initiating new horticultural projects in Africa. Rabobank will facilitate the consortium.
Berry Marttin, Member of the Board of Rabobank, "Ensuring that the growing world population will have sufficient food now and in the future is one of the greatest challenges facing the modern world. The Dutch greenhouse vegetables industry can play an important part in this. It is the most efficient food producing industry in the world with the highest production per acre and the lowest use of water, fertilizers and other source materials. Through this consortium, we will unite the Dutch expertise and set up Dutch-African partnerships to develop a flourishing African vegetable producing industry. We have decided to focus on Africa, because population growth is expected to accelerate in the next decennia, whereas food production has until now remained relatively low. Africa is a net importer of food, spending over 50 billion dollars importing food annually."
Next steps for the consortium include:
- Identification of the most promising regions and produce in Africa for the vegetable value chain
- Choice of regions within countries
- Developing African Credit facilities: making cooperatives bankable, strengthening supportive agricultural credit cooperatives, credit instruments, links to international capital markets.
- Capacity building (Building understanding of obstacles that inhibit governments and organizations from realizing their development goals)
- Education and (vocational) training