With GI powers, rich pickings for Mysore farmers
Farmers, groups of farmers and farmers co-operatives in the state will get rights to grow, sell and export and process at least 11 horticultural products so far registered under geographical Indication (GI).
The horticulture department has delegated the registry user’s powers to the farmers of the local areas, enabling them to commercially cultivate the produce.
The department, which had the GI registry powers vested under its wings, has been empowered by the biotechnology centre at Hulimavu on the outskirts of Bangalore to delegate the powers to the farmers to develop the crops further.
“The biotechnology centre at Hulimavu has already protected 11 different horticultural crops under Geographical Indication certification. As primary transfer of rights we had earlier delegated powers to the horticulture department to with explicit instructions to transfer powers under the GI to the farmers,” Krishnamurthy, deputy director of the centre, said.
This process has started recently; the Biotechnology Centre Hulimavu was planning to directly transfer the benefits of certification to the farmers and groups of farmers to develop the crops” he added.
Karnataka has been awarded GI tag for 10 crops including Nanjangudu Rasabale (banana), oranges of Kodagu, betel leaves of Mysore, Mysore jasmine, Udupi jasmine, Hadagali jasmine, red banana of Kamalapura, red chakota of Devanahalli, appemidi (tender mango) of Sagar and matti gulla (endemic round brinjal) of Mattu near Udupi.
The first ‘harvest’ of the produce grown under the delegation of GI powers was carried out by the horticulture department at Kukkarahalli horticulture farm on Friday.
“The department sees this development as a path breaking event. The farmers will be the absolute owners of the GI tag for Nanjangudu rasabale. The demo farm has yielded the typical Nanjangudu rasabale, we have tested the composition of the fruit and it has matched with the crop that the traditional farms grow in Nanjangud, it also means that the Nanjangud rasabale could be grown in Mysore too and the farmers now have a larger area for cultivating this tasty and creamy type of banana,” said a horticulture department official.
Madae Gowda, a grower of Nanjanagudu banana, said the growers have planned for expanding their marketing network and plans were afoot to penetrate the high value market like the malls in Bangalore. One of the hypermarkets in Bangalore has also agreed to give a special counter under the banana section for the famous fruit.
“We will bring more land under rasabale cultivation, a team of members have also visited parts of Tamil Nadu and studied the cultivation methods of Tanjavore rasabale to increase yield and improve the size of each fruit,” he said.
How local is your food?
How local is your food?
By Doug Rich
VIEWPOINT—Mary Ross and her husband, Pat, have a unique viewpoint of the local food system in Douglas County and surrounding region. They not only produce corn, soybeans, and beef on a commercial basis but also grow 35 acres of sweetcorn for local markets. Mary Ross did not agree with all of the assumptions made in the Food Policy Council’s analysis of the local food system. (Journal photo by Doug Rich.)
Local food is the latest trend for foodies across the country. Restaurants promote locally grown items on their menus, and popular chefs extol the virtues of eating local on their syndicated television shows.
Erin Barnett with LocalHarvest, a California-based website dedicated to local food sources, said the buy local food movement is the result of a number of different factors that include the emergence of Community Supported Agriculture, farmers markets, a renewed emphasis on supporting local economies, and food safety scares.
“There are a lot of different definitions that people use to describe local food,” Barnett said. “They talk about what is grown in their county or what is grown in a 100-mile radius of their home. We like to say buy as local as reasonable.”
Recently an in-depth analysis of the local food system in Douglas, Jefferson, and Leavenworth counties in Kansas was released. The study, “Building a Deep-Rooted Local Food System,” was done by the Douglas County Food Policy Council with help from researchers at Kansas State University.
“We wanted to show all of the different faces of agriculture in these counties,” Eileen Horn, Douglas County sustainability coordinator, said. “We did not want it to be a niche voice just for the foodie movement but instead try to understand the whole system. It is a complicated beast.”
Horn said they wanted to find the leverage points in the system where they could capture more of the food dollars locally.
The analysis found that agriculture is still a major contributor to the local economy in this three-county region. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture the total market value of agricultural products in the tri-county region was $135.8 million, but only $1.2 million of this amount was direct sales to local consumers.
The report also found some gaps in the system. The tri-county region lacks the capacity for light processing needed to prepare local food for restaurants and institutions as well as the storage and transportation infrastructure. Even in an agricultural region like the tri-county area, food insecurity was found to exist. According to the analysis over 10,000 residents in the tri-county region have limited access to grocery stores and healthy food choices. Two “food deserts” were identified in the report.
“The whole point of this food system report was to serve as an educational foundation for the Food Policy Council and to help us formulate recommendations for policy,” Horn said.
The Food Policy Council made the following recommendations:
–To ensure that high-quality agricultural land is available for farming, policy tools and incentives should be developed that are economically feasible for the landowner.
–Increase and incentivize local production and consumption of fruit, vegetable, poultry, and dairy products to close gaps in the local food system.
–Work to attract food-processing businesses to the region.
–Establish economic development incentives for grocers who locate in low-access neighborhoods or grocers who improve existing stores to address food deserts in the region.
Horn said these recommendations are locally grounded and take into consideration the local soils and climate.
Mary Ross, lifelong Douglas County resident and farmer, was not sure these recommendations would work. Ross and her husband, Pat, have years of experience with the local food system. They operate a commercial grain and livestock enterprise as well as grow sweet corn for the local market.
“I didn’t like the report,” Ross said. “I just thought some of the things in the report were unattainable. It did not deal with the real world of farming, of production agriculture.”
Ross said her first reaction was to wonder why the county was spending money on a study like this one. She did not think this was where the county should be spending its limited resources.
Ross felt so strongly about the report that she wrote a letter to the editor of the Lawrence Journal World to explain her position. One of the facts Ross disagreed with was that the region only needed 909 acres of corn to meet its needs. Ross and her husband grow 3,000 acres of field corn and 35 acres of sweet corn on their farm. Part of their corn acreage is used to grow waxy corn that is used for industrial as well as food products.
“We grow most of our corn for livestock feed and fuel, but some does go to food production,” Ross said.
Eileen Horn said that particular fact was not explained very well in the report. The 909 acres of corn referred to corn consumed as a vegetable for humans and not as animal feed.
“The author of the study in several places just wanted grass-fed beef, which I have a real problem with because it is not as tasty as grain-fed beef,” Ross said.
Ross said they have a lot of owned and rented pasture that is invaluable for raising beef, but they feed grain so their animals reach market weight sooner. The Rosses buy feeder calves locally and finish them out on their farm using their own homegrown grain and distillers grains from Boulevard Brewing Co. in Kansas City. The cattle are sold to Bichelmeyer Meats in Kansas City, which then markets the beef locally.
“The U.S. exports a lot beef,” Ross said. “The world wants our grain-fed beef.”
Mary Ross and her family are well known in the area for the sweet corn they grow every summer. They started selling sweet corn at the Lawrence farmers market 29 years ago but now sell most of it right from their farm. Some of their sweet corn is sold to vendors who sell at farmers markets in Overland Park and Kansas City.
“Everybody likes sweet corn, but we never dreamed it would be so successful and that we would be at it for so long,” Ross said.
They have considered expanding their sweet corn acreage over the years but Ross said they did not think it was economically feasible. Sweet corn production requires a lot of manual labor, which is true for most small-scale fruit and vegetable production. According to the USDA Economic Research Service, farms with local food sales require more operator time than do farms without local food sales. The USDA-ERS study said the average farm with local food sales devoted 1.3 full-time equivalent jobs to the farm compared to 0.9 FTE for farms without local food sales. This was true for farms with up to $250,000 in annual sales.
Ross is all for supporting local production but said if she was struggling to feed a family she could not afford to shop at the farmers market. Ross said if we want to expand agriculture in this area we should spend more money on research for traditional row crops.
There are over 100 food policy councils across the U.S. and many of them have issued similar reports about their food systems but their conclusions vary. Each one created a slightly different definition of a local food system based on local resources and conditions.
“We tried really hard to just take a snapshot of what we have today and what we eat today just to get everyone on the same page,” Horn said.
Doug Rich can be reached by phone at 785-749-5304 or by e-mail at richhpj@aol.com.
Editor’s note: The full text of the Douglas County Food Policy Council report is available at www.douglas-county.com/sites/fpc.
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Agriculture News from HPJ – Your Ag News Source
Kenya: Consumers Grow Despite Inflation
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By Duncan Miriri, 26 January 2012
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In a cafe on the terrace of an upmarket Nairobi mall, well-heeled Kenyans sip coffee as shoppers in the car park navigate between BMW X5s, Toyota Land Cruisers and Mercedes.
Sales at this Java House outlet along the Ngong Road were up last year, says Kevin Ashley, a Californian who co-founded the chain of 14 coffee houses 13 years ago. Kenya’s rich and new middle classes have a growing taste for lattes and ice cream.
That’s just one sign that many African states such as Kenya are changing.
A study by the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, has pointed to the potential of the continent’s more than 1 billion people, millions of whom have moved out of subsistence agriculture and into urban jobs over the past decade.
Such promise has helped fuel foreign investment. Kenya alone has had a capital influx of billions of dollars in recent years: the latest official figures show around $800 million came in 2008.
But the wealth on show at the mall has a flip side. The consumption boom has been fuelled by fast-growing credit. In Kenya and elsewhere that has sucked in imports – cars, shoes, clothes, wines and whiskies – and swelled the current account deficit.
Inflation in Kenya is now nearing 20 per cent.
Java House employs 700 workers and plans to open new outlets soon, but its co-owner worries about price rises.
A volatile currency has fed into coffee prices, which are paid in dollars.
A sack of green coffee costs close to $500, up from $150-200 per sack three years ago, (with a dollar exchanging at about Sh87).
The risk is that Africa’s consumers are harvesting their gains before their economies can bear it, economic analysts say.
“Minimum wage-earners in urban centres in East Africa are encountering a an unprecedented squeeze,” said Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst, and himself solidly middle class. Inflation is a major concern, he said.
“It creates a sort of reverse Robin Hood effect where the poor carry the main burden.”
Western investors have become accustomed to Africa as a boom story in recent years. Since the financial crisis, investors have ventured into Africa in search of higher returns.
In Kenya, firms have been hiring and property prices have risen exponentially, creating a feel-good factor for home owners, especially in towns and cities. That, in turn, has fed the appetite for consumer goods.
“Africa is about consumers,” Stephen Murphy, managing director at private equity firm Citadel Capital, told a conference in Nairobi in December.
“It is about high-impact infrastructure investing and it is certainly about value-added exports and not just commodity exports.”
Razia Khan, head of Africa research at Standard Chartered in London, says the problem is an Africa-wide one.
“More rapid growth was accompanied almost everywhere by a surge in imports, especially capital goods imports related to infrastructure development.”Like other African countries, Kenya has yet to make good use of the capital pouring into the country and encourage manufacturing.
“It is good if people think Kenya is a good place to park their money but what Kenya needs most is long-term investments that go into productive industries,” said Wolfgang Fengler, the lead economist at the World Bank office for Kenya.
Unlike countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, or Zambia, Kenya doesn’t have significant mineral or oil resources. But its economy has been lifted by infrastructure investment – including a high-speed internet connection.
That should help spread the wealth, and is already attracting home thousands of skilled, educated Kenyans, many of whom work in the booming financial sector.
Satchu, a trader and analyst, is one of them. He returned five years ago after working with various banks in London all his adult life, at one point managing a balance sheet in excess of $17 billion for Sumitomo Bank.
When he first returned, Satchu headed straight to his hometown, Mombasa. In the back garden of his home, he erected a 52-metre tower to get a decent connection to the internet and access the New York Mercantile Exchange.
In 2009, though, a high-speed undersea cable plugged Kenya into the global grid. Encouraged by new tech-friendly policies, Kenya has pulled in investments from firms like Britain’s Vodafone, France Telecom and India’s Essar Telecoms. Mobile commerce is growing.
Now Satchu has moved to Nairobi and follows the global markets through 3G technology.
“I have a strong conviction that the African convergence with the rest of the world has begun, therefore I needed to place myself not on the beach, but in the thick of things.”
Satchu has a well-honed urge to consume. He likes to wear pricey Canali suits and Hermes ties, and drives a Nissan Patrol, a behemoth four-wheel-drive.
“I prefer to drive a Maserati or a fast car but it is just not practicable on our roads,” he said, pointing to one of Kenya’s persistent shortcomings.
Eventually, improved infrastructure might allow him to drive that Maserati. For now, analysts fret about whether Kenya’s exporting capacity can keep pace with its imports.
“In most frontier markets … we haven’t seen sufficient evidence of this,” Khan said.
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Kenya’s consumers grow despite inflation
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In a cafe on the terrace of an upmarket Nairobi mall, well-heeled Kenyans sip coffee as shoppers in the car park navigate between BMW X5s, Toyota Land Cruisers and Mercedes.
Sales at this Java House outlet along the Ngong Road were up last year, says Kevin Ashley, a Californian who co-founded the chain of 14 coffee houses 13 years ago. Kenya’s rich and new middle classes have a growing taste for lattes and ice cream.
That’s just one sign that many African states such as Kenya are changing.
A study by the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank, has pointed to the potential of the continent’s more than 1 billion people, millions of whom have moved out of subsistence agriculture and into urban jobs over the past decade.
Such promise has helped fuel foreign investment. Kenya alone has had a capital influx of billions of dollars in recent years: the latest official figures show around $800 million came in 2008.
But the wealth on show at the mall has a flip side. The consumption boom has been fuelled by fast-growing credit. In Kenya and elsewhere that has sucked in imports – cars, shoes, clothes, wines and whiskies – and swelled the current account deficit.
Inflation in Kenya is now nearing 20 per cent.
Java House employs 700 workers and plans to open new outlets soon, but its co-owner worries about price rises.
A volatile currency has fed into coffee prices, which are paid in dollars.
A sack of green coffee costs close to $500, up from $150-200 per sack three years ago, (with a dollar exchanging at about Sh87).
The risk is that Africa’s consumers are harvesting their gains before their economies can bear it, economic analysts say.
“Minimum wage-earners in urban centres in East Africa are encountering a an unprecedented squeeze,” said Aly Khan Satchu, an independent trader and analyst, and himself solidly middle class. Inflation is a major concern, he said.
“It creates a sort of reverse Robin Hood effect where the poor carry the main burden.”
Western investors have become accustomed to Africa as a boom story in recent years. Since the financial crisis, investors have ventured into Africa in search of higher returns.
In Kenya, firms have been hiring and property prices have risen exponentially, creating a feel-good factor for home owners, especially in towns and cities. That, in turn, has fed the appetite for consumer goods.
.
Turks continue to grow
It’s been quite the interesting first year for Tremont head coach Troy Schmidt.
Schmidt, who took over for Ron Martin this year, has seen the Turks improve quite a bit this season.
Even after a blowout loss to Minonk Fieldcrest Tuesday night, Tremont is 15-7 heading into a Friday night game with Flanagan-Cornell-Woodland.
That’s a nice improvement over last year’s 13-14 mark, although the team certainly had a lot to deal with during the 2010-11 season.
A year ago last week, the Turks and the city of Tremont dealt with the loss of students Mike Honan and Celine Estes in a car accident. Honan was on the Tremont roster and had played for the team in earlier years, but because of a football injury, he hadn’t played for the Turks in 2010-11.
Still, he was as much a part of the team as anyone, and all the players and coaches felt the effect of the losses.
After a brief period of time off, Tremont returned to the court and actually got a win on a last-second shot in their first game back against Flanagan-Cornell.
Still, even after a year, the hurt is still there, especially on the one-year anniversary of the tragedy.
Schmidt declined to speak about the deaths and the impact on the team out of respect for the Honan and Estes families, but guard Sammy Bolliger admitted, “I’m sure it affected us and we thought about it, but we all know if someone needs someone, we’re all here for each other.”
This year’s team is certainly a close-knit group, partially because of last year’s tragedy and partially because the roster includes 10 seniors who have grown up together and know each other well.
With the change in coaches, there was certainly a chance for backlash after the popular Martin left the program. But Schmidt was an assistant to Martin so the transition has been smooth.
“It has been a very rewarding experience to me and my family assuming the role of head coach,” Schmidt said. “The team has performed well and truly bought into the new system.
“The success (we’re having) is a direct reflection of the buy-in and hard work necessary to play at such a high and intense level. I am impressed with how hard my players have played night in and night out in practices and games.”
The Turks face a tough road the rest of the way with top-notch Heart of Illinois competition as well as a regional that includes rival Dee-Mack and Bloomington Central Catholic, Downs Tri-Valley, Olympia and host Normal U. High.
But after all they’ve been through together, the Turks aren’t going to be intimidated by some good competition.
At bombed north Nigeria police station, youth rage burns in oil-rich, poverty …
KANO, Nigeria – Jubilant youths overran a blood-splattered police station on Wednesday after it was attacked by a radical Islamist sect, revealing a streak of popular discontent with a government that many say has failed them in Africa’s most populous nation.
Suspected members of Boko Haram surrounded the police station Tuesday night in Kano, ordered civilians to get off the street, began chanting “God is great” and threw homemade bombs into the station while spraying it with assault rifles, witnesses said. The attack followed co-ordinated assaults on Friday that killed at least 185 people in Kano, Nigeria’s second-largest city.
Associated Press journalists on Wednesday saw that youths had overrun the bombed-out station in the Sheka neighbourhood of this sprawling city in northern Nigeria.
Doors to jail cells stood open. Blood coated the floor of the local commander’s private bathroom. Investigative files that had apparently been rifled through were spilled on the floors. Cheering youths outside waved an officer’s uniform and jumped up and down on top of a burned-out police truck, with one wearing a police ballistic helmet, smiling.
Others in the crowd said in the local Hausa language they would kill any police officer who returned. Some ominously asked journalists visiting the site if they were Christians.
“We are not satisfied with what is happening now,” said 26-year-old Abubakar Muawuya. Our leaders “have to call this Boko Haram and sit down with them.”
Kano state police spokesman Magaji Musa Majiya did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, though it followed the pattern of others carried out by Boko Haram, including the use of improvised explosives.
The sect, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege” in Hausa, has claimed responsibility for Friday co-ordinated attacks in Kano.
Boko Haram wants to implement strict Shariah law and avenge the deaths of Muslims in communal violence across Nigeria, a multiethnic nation of more than 160 million people split largely into a Christian south and Muslim north.
On Wednesday, Niger’s foreign minister said the sect received training and weapons from al-Qaida’s North African wing.
Mohamed Bazoum said in Mauritania’s capital that members of Boko Haram have had training and received explosives from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
“There is no doubt the two organizations are connected and that they have the same objective of destabilizing our region,” he said.
Ministers from the West African region met Wednesday in Mauritania, and vowed to intensify their efforts against the groups.
While Boko Haram has begun targeting Christians in the north, most of those killed Friday appeared to be Muslim, officials said.
Nigeria’s weak and corruption-riddled central government has been unable to stop Boko Haram’s increasingly bloody attacks.
Nigeria is an oil-rich nation but most Nigerians don’t see the benefits and earn less than $2 a day. They have to contend with a rotting infrastructure like bad roads and a lack of electrical power, and seeming government indifference to the problems. The level of anger is high as democracy in a nation with a history of military rule has failed to markedly improve people’s lives.
When President Goodluck Jonathan on Jan. 1 ended a fuel subsidy that kept prices at the pump low, unions launched a nationwide strike and streets of cities filled with protesters, forcing the president to partially reinstate the subsidy.
___
Associated Press writer Ahmed Mohamed in Nouakchott, Mauritania, contributed to this report.
___
Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP.
The rich, worried about inequality?
25 January 2012
Last updated at 08:39 GMT
Robert Peston
Business editor
The UK is certainly not alone in debating whether the widening gap between the super-haves and the have-littles is an altogether good thing.
It is one of the big talking points here at the World Economic Forum, for an obvious reason.
Widening inequalities were widely seen as the necessary price of growing global prosperity during the boom years.
But since the great crash of 2007/8, when most countries in the developed West went from slump to stagnation, it is not clear what advantage is being conferred on the vast majority of people by a tiny elite of high earners seemingly becoming ever richer.
The governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, caught the mood yesterday when he pointed to the perceived unfairness that it was the well-heeled bankers who caused the mess we’re in, but it’s those on average and below-average incomes who are paying the price.
Even relatively mainstream economists are questioning the consensus of the past 30 odd years which said that the only way to grow the cake for all is to incentivise the great wealth creators by allowing them to have more and more of that cake (what you might call the Thatcher/Blair consensus).
Which is why the 2011 bonus for Stephen Hester, RBS’s chief executive, is such a lightning rod for discontent in the UK, even though he was actually running a commercial property company, British Land, when the bankers’ risk-taking party was at its frenzied peak (and see my post of last night for more on this).
As for the World Economic Forum itself, one of its pre-Davos reports indentifies growing income inequalities as a threat to economic and social stability.
Statement of the bloomin’ obvious?
Maybe. But it’s a shift: only last year a plea made in Davos by the head of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, for an end to banker bashing was widely applauded by his peers; today, as the Occupy Wall Street and Occupy the City campaigns have resonated with both left and right on the political spectrum, few bankers would make a public appeal for love and understanding.
That said, will there be more than platitudes uttered here about how important it is for capitalists to be seen to be caring and working in the general interest?
Some, like Davos regular Bill Gates, lead by example, by giving away their vast fortunes in the cause of povery alleviation – and as it happens he today has written his annual letter, in which he calls on well-heeled citizens and governments of wealthier nations not to use these tougher economic times as an excuse to squeeze the financial help for poorer nations struggling to become self-sufficient.
What could snuff out this apparent new spirit of solidarity between plutocrats and protestors? Well a strong sustainable global economic recovery would probably see business leaders revert to the argument that if they get rich, the world is also enriched.
Fat chance of that, you might think.
But interestingly, for all the apparent despair about prospects manifested in PwC’s annual global survey of chief executives, I find the bosses I encounter surprisingly optimistic. They’ve moved from a “glass-half-empty” despondency just before Christmas to something a bit more positive (and see my post of Monday for why).
There are signs of thaw from this bleak economic winter, especially in the US, and even in northern Europe. But the risks remain that the unsustainable debts of southern Europe could bring the global economy to its knees.
So there is certainly an element of wishful thinking in the rosier view of the boss class.
Which is why I am sticking a microphone in the mooshes of billionaires and chief execs, in an exploration for tomorrow’s Today Programme of whether there is a genuine recognition by business leaders that intensifying inequalities are a matter of fundamental concern – or whether they are simply saying what they think people want to hear.
Landmarks grow in Brooklyn
Downtown Brooklyn is standing tall, with a cluster of 21 buildings set to become the city’s first-ever landmarked “skyscraper district.”
The controversial plan was green-lighted yesterday by a City Council subcommittee.
The plan — aimed at protecting Brooklyn Borough Hall and 20 primarily high-rise commercial and government office buildings from overzealous developers — is vehemently opposed by real-estate industry honchos.
But it is expected to pass through the full council Feb. 1 thanks to key endorsements yesterday by the council’s subcommittee on planning and Councilman Stephen Levin, who represents the area.
“After close consideration, we believe that this new historic district will strengthen the character of Downtown Brooklyn, allowing for new development and growth like the new retail space planned for the Municipal Building [next to Borough Hall] while preserving the graceful, historic, early-generation skyscrapers that make it Brooklyn’s civic center,” Levin and Councilman Brad Lander said in a joint statement.
The predominantly late 19th century and early 20th century buildings also include the 35-story Montague-Court Building at 16 Court St. and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce Building at 75 Livingston St.
The district would mostly run along Court Street, from Montague Street four blocks south to Livingston Street.
The “Borough Hall Skyscraper District” designation was first pitched to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in 2010 by the Brooklyn Heights Association and other preservation groups.
The commission endorsed the plan last year.
But it has faced steep opposition from the Real Estate Board of New York, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, Brooklyn Law School, Court-Livingston-Schermerhorn Business Improvement District, and other groups.
“Not only is this an inappropriate use of landmark designation, but it will end up costing the city much-needed tax revenue and jobs,” said REBNY president Steven Spinola. “This is another case of the city landmarking away its economic future.”
Opponents also claim it would deter new businesses from moving into the Court Street commercial corridor because of the added costs needed to operate in a historic district.
But city officials say the “historic district” designation doesn’t prevent new development or façade work at these sites — it only sets guidelines overseen by Landmarks staff to ensure that such construction blends with the neighborhood.
The proposed district abuts the Brooklyn Heights Historic District, which became New York’s first neighborhood granted historic district protection in 1965.
rcalder@nypost.com
Shaping Value to Enter Emerging Markets Like Africa
This is an excerpt from the Shaping Value to Enter African Markets chapter in the forthcoming book, Growing Rich in the New Africa.
In Redefining Business in the New Africa, I shared about leveraging trust networks to do business in Africa, offering a straight-forward framework. But, I also noted that trust is not enough. Leveraging any network in global business needs to incorporate value and trust, hence, the name “trust-value” networks.
In trust-value networks, the aim is to have high trust/high value networks. Networks with high trust and low value, or low trust and high value, are not healthy and have problems growing in an organic fashion. In today’s world of rapid change, only networks and organizations that can move fluidly and dynamically will remain strong.
Let’s look at a few basic concepts related to value to start. First, an economy is driven by delivery of something of value to end consumers – things that they cannot do or produce for themselves, or prefer not to. When a consumer finds something of value that he or she wants or needs, the person transacts an exchange to acquire that value. The currency of the exchange can vary from money to information to resources to other tangible assets. In the end, however, a value exchange has occurred.
Second, it’s important to know that value is defined by what the consumer perceives not you as the provider of that value. In general, we can say that the higher the value the more people will pay for it. However, in strained economies and emerging markets, you need to factor in how much people are willing and able to pay. People may think what you provide is of high value, but they may also think the price is too high to acquire it or they cannot afford it.
Third, businesses are responsible for adding value to consumers, but that should translate to revenue and profit for the businesses. The other part of the equation is that businesses need to educate consumers on the value they bring. You can have a great product, but if consumers don’t know about it, don’t understand it, and/or don’t know the value it brings them you cannot tap into the potential of the market.
There are three waves of expressing value to others – all benefits, favorable points of difference compared to your competitors, or key differentiators that provide the greatest value to the customer.[1] The first wave, all benefits, focuses on translating all features of a product or service to language that expresses the benefits to the customer. The key question answered is “Why should the customer purchase your offering?”
The second wave, favorable points of difference, focuses on identifying all favorable points of differences between your offerings and that of your competitors. It builds on what you have done in the first wave. The key question answered is “Why should the customer purchase your offering instead of a competitor’s?”
The third wave, key differentiators, focuses on identifying the one or two points of difference that provide the customer the greatest value and on which your competitors cannot match or exceed you. It builds on what you have done in the first and second wave. The key question answered is “What is the most worthwhile, distinct, and unique aspects of your offering that customers should keep in mind?”
If you haven’t noted already, this is a process. You must first understand and be able to communicate all benefits of your offering, then you must understand and be able to communicate the differences in favor of you against your competitors. Then finally, you can hone or refine to a few key differentiators that make you stand out amongst all the competitors. All of this is based on dynamics, e.g., customer characteristics, of the market in which you want to enter. For example, customer characteristics differ in Africa compared to Europe or North America. So, the importance of being able to adapt the expression of your value to different customer segments or markets is important.
Through this process you are conceptualizing and formulating a value proposition. The basic definition of a value proposition is the total package of benefits a customer receives for paying you. However, as I have stressed before, you want to focus on unique competitive space (UPS), so you want to create a unique value proposition (UVP).
Note that you may have offerings that offer very similar benefits to those of your competitors, however, the way you package, or configure, them may create that UVP. In this case, you want to try to make it something that competitors cannot easily duplicate, at least in the short run. This is where leveraging your strengths help you create UVP that your competitors find it difficult to compete with.
The unique configurations of offerings you create, based on your strengths, can give you an edge over competitors. Networks in which your organization is a significant member is an example. In our case, we have developed good partnerships with networks that others have ignored or haven’t served well. This is another point about creating UVP – also create your own unique market in the open space no one else is serving appropriately.
In Africa, there are more obvious open spaces in markets than in any other region, I think. There are enormous amounts of valuable assets that are underdeveloped in Africa – human capital, land, water, etc. Africa’s problem is not poverty, but wealth potential that is lying fallow because it hasn’t been developed.
One example is mangos that grow wild in several countries in Africa like Mozambique and Sierra Leone. Each season mangos rot because they are not harvested and processed. In Sierra Leone, Juice Felix developed a processing plant to transform these mangoes into juice which is sold in the local markets because there is strong demand. The supply chain incorporates villages in which the wild mangos typically go to waste because they are not good to eat, but are suitable for juice. Juice Felix has added value to what was going to waste while bringing revenue to poor communities.
There is tremendous potential for small and large enterprises that can operate in the open space in Africa. Being able to do so is actually a competitive advantage itself.
Taking this approach will help you accelerate entrance into markets anywhere on the globe. It will also save you finances and resources to ramp up against competitors. If you top it off with strong partners, who can help deliver the market to you, you are way ahead.
Featured image is wild mangos, an example of raw products that can be transformed into value to tap open market spaces. Source: Wikimedia.
[1] Anderson, J. C., Kumar, N., Narus, J. A. (2007). Value Merchants: Demonstrating and Documenting Superior Value in Business Markets. Harvard Business School Press: Cambridge, MA.
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