Green Agri-business and Agri-food Value Chain Growth and Development: Financing and Enhancing Women Agribusiness Entrepreneurs

This upcoming workshop, to be held on 26-27 April in Bangkok, Thailand, and via videoconferencing, aligns with output 1: strengthening climate-friendly, inclusive, and gender-responsive agri-food value chains and agribusinesses of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) technical assistance GMS Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security Program (SAFSP). 

Growth and development of green small and medium agribusinesses are constrained by a lack of specific policies and actions enabling their access to credit at fair interest rates, more reliable and real-time market information, higher-value national retail and export markets, better knowledge of safe agrifood production and processing and export market food safety regulations, and knowledge of green technologies to reduce energy use and food waste. Small and medium agribusinesses in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) have small volumes of agrifood products and many do not have the business relationships to connect to value markets. Women, in particular, face barriers to empowerment due to a lack of access to and control over resources, finance and time allocation. 

Concurrently, whereas digital innovations offer good opportunities to develop green and resilient agribusinesses and value chains in the GMS, their use is still limited and their adoption is slow due to the lack of critical digital infrastructure investment, especially in more remote areas, and the low digital literacy of agribusiness operators and smallholder farmers. Women agribusiness owners and women smallholder farmers are especially impacted by their lack of access to digital services and by low digital literacy. 

An inclusive multistakeholder approach is critical to the development of policies that meet the needs of small and medium agribusinesses and facilitate a transition towards the production and marketing of green, safe, and resilient agrifood products in the GMS. It also requires the evolution of value chains into “value networks”, where there is a much stronger relationship between stakeholders. Innovative approaches to promote the inclusion of women agri-entrepreneurs and policy actions tapping into the potential of digital innovations are also very necessary. 

Expected outputs  

The workshop participants will contribute to proposing and recommending to the upcoming 20th GMS Working Group in Agriculture Annual Meeting: 

1. Policies and actions to promote and develop green agribusinesses development in the GMS;  

2. Agri finance priority actions to support green agribusiness and value chain development;  

3. Policies and actions to enhance the role of women and youth agri-entrepreneurs, and;  

4. Investment project priorities for green agribusiness and agrifood value chain growth and development in the GMS Annual Meeting Summary Statement with follow-up actions. 

Target participants 

• GMS WGA representatives 

• Technical department representatives from GMS Ministries of Agriculture 

• Representatives from GMS organizations for agribusiness and farmers 

• GMS private sector agribusiness representatives 

• Development partners 

• Regional organizations  

• ADB staff 

• TA9916 Consultant team 

Register here