Feeding people, all the people of all the nations, is still an ongoing challenge for developed and developing world. Shalom Magazines reporter speaks to the Director of CINADCO about the next century.
As the calendar moves to the year 2000, to the coming of a new millenium, fast-moving changes in every area are forcing institutions and organizations to reassess their priorities and goals. CINADCO, the Center for International Agricultural Development Cooperation of the Israeli Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and the agricultural arm of MASHAV, the Center for International Cooperation of Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is no exception.
Zvi Herman, Director of CINADCO, highlights for Shalom some of the new directions into which CINADCO is moving. Today, he states, we are living in a world where all over the globe we are witnessing a shift to privatization. The growing importance of the private sector and entrepreneurship means that we must adjust our programming and planning to meet changes posed by this shift. If, for example, in the past our work was basically government-to-government oriented, i.e., based on agreements between us and the countries in the developing world to which we are providing technical assistance, today we realize that we must work with both governments and with the elements in the private sector. In setting up our modalities, we now have to ask ourselves if what we are doing is also relevant and suitable for the private sector.
Nowhere has the move to privatization been more dramatic and far-reaching than in the former Soviet Union bloc countries which, since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, are moving from a centralized state-controlled economy to a free, market-driven one. Here, in some of these Central Asian Republics, CINADCO has initiated significant field crop and dairy projects designed to help the farmers move from working on state-controlled farms where there was public control over all agricultural resources to private farms.
Herman describes one of these projects. In Uzbekistan, he reports, we set up two small model family farms, designed and implemented with professional and financial assistance from MASHAV and USAID (United States Agency for International development). The owners of the farm were brought to Israel for training, then returned to work on the farms we had helped build for them. So successful was this operation and so appreciative of our endeavors were top government officials in Uzbekistan that they urged us to duplicate it and set up other model farms, thus making available to other farmers the concept, knowledge and operational capability of these farms.
CINADCO also helped the farmers set up and run a regional milk processing plant, as well as assisting them in developing a wider range of products which included inter alia yogurts and cheeses. It also advised them on how to develop an effective and productive system for marketing their products.
We are aware that we are working in a period of tremendous change, says Herman. It is no easy task to get people to change the habits of a life-time. It is not, for example, unusual to find some people in the private sector working and behaving as if they were still living under a centrally-directed system. Thus, we have to work slowly and carefully to nurture and develop the initiative that private ownership requires. Marketing, for example, was once a government-supported activity. Today, it isnt. Our new modality, which started with a family farm and was expanded to include a regional milk processing plant and a program for marketing, is helping these farmers make the transition from a command economy to one where they must take full responsibility for all their activities.
In line with this new focus on working with the private sector, CINADCO has set up a network of Agro-Business Advisory Centers in various key regions. The first three, established in 1998, are located in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. These centers, designed to serve the newly emerging class of small businessmen and entrepreneurs, are staffed by qualified agricultural planners, as well as by local people, trained by CINADCO and MASHAV. As the saying goes, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting. And, emphasizes Herman, in the few short months of their existence, our work at these centers has proved to be so relevant and valuable that banks and other financial institutions now readily grant loans to small businesses in the strength of the proposals we have prepared for them. Our proposals are proof of the potential success and viability of the enterprises for which the loans are needed.
Herman envisions a far-flung spin-off effect emerging from the information provided at these Agro-Business Advisory Centers. We foresee that this information will also naturally flow to all concerned personnel, including sponsoring countries such as Israel and the United States. And if today, he adds, these centers are located only in Asia, we anticipate expanding this network in the very near future to include Africa and other countries where we and MASHAV operate.
As innovative and timely is the drive to meet the needs of the growing private sector, so, too, is the way Herman envisions utilizing on-line computer-based communication. It will enable CINADCO to interact most impressively with trainers and trainees alike. For example, take the situation of an instructor of ours working in a remote village, who, faced with a particular problem, can E-mail us (over the Internet, the international computer communication system) for advice and receive an instant written solution and, hopefully, as the technology improves, even colored pictures and graphs. Thus, our experts abroad, as well as other professionals, including extension workers, become part of a much broader team of experts sited at our home base. This will improve and enhance our entire operation.
With this new technology we will also be able to feed people abroad with the latest developments taking place in their fields of interest. This will enable them to keep abreast of new trends and innovative solutions.
In summary, states Herman, we envision that this new technology will help us provide a much more diversified and improved service both for our experts and for all interested parties, including, of course, our trainees. Today, it must be noted, all MASHAVs courses include a computer component training in the computer skills which in todays world are not a luxury, but a necessity.
Nevertheless, impressive as is the new technology and the uses to which it can be put, it will not, stresses Herman, be used at the expense or instead of our tried-and-true hand-on practical work experiences which are at the core of all our training in Israel and in the participants own countries.
In planning for the new millenium, adaptation and expansion are the key operative words. And in order to expand as we must, states Herman, we must increase our financial resources by touching ground with more international funding institutions and putting ourselves on their shortlists. (A shortlist is a list of preferable candidates selected for financial consideration in filling a particular position.) We know that we can offer constructive solutions to many of the problems and issues raised by the projects being developed by these financial institutions. In the tenders we prepare to stress our accumulative years of experience and expertise in mounting consultancy and training programs and projects.
Through the years we have learned to take into consideration the educational level, cultural codes, value systems and mores of our trainees, as well as the special climatic, soil and other conditions of their countries. We have learned to work with the resources available to us. Most important, we understand the need to adapt our work to the ability of trainees to absorb information, know-how, knowledge and technology we transmit to them, streamlining all this into a concentrated, integrated approach that wilthen yield the most cost effective results.
It is obvious that CINADCO is well aware of the need and importance of moving with the times. Whether pinpointing new priorities, utilizing new technology or seeking new avenues of funding, it is providing the veracity of the adage to stand still is to retreat. As CINADCO prepares for the new millenium, no one can fault it for standing still.