Recent literature suggests that agricultural value chains are changing rapidly and places an increasing focus on the importance of actors and activities taking place in the “midstream” of these value chains, after production and prior to final sale. This article discusses the financial needs of midstream actors in agricultural value chains, emphasizing differences across midstream activities and highlighting how value chain characteristics can influence both financial needs and potential remedies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the prospects of digital financial services to alleviate financial needs of midstream actors.

The midstream of agricultural value chains are rapidly changing in response to shifting domestic and international demand. While the performance of this segment may have important implications for the entire sector, evidence on midstream actors and their financial needs remain thin. We use data from both the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture and the World Bank Enterprise Survey from seven African countries to identify these agricultural midstream firms and assess their access to formal credit, comparing them to other, non-agricultural midstream firms. We find that the identified agricultural midstream firms are larger and more productive than their non-agricultural midstream counterparts and are less likely to report barriers to accessing credit, though overall access levels remain low. Among agricultural midstream firms, those owned or managed by women are more likely to report barriers to accessing credit. Taken together, these findings help build our understanding about the financial needs of micro-, small-, and medium-size enterprises in the agricultural midstream.

`This is a "must read" for anyone interested in value chain finance.---Kenneth Shwedel, Agricultural Economist --Book Jacket.

While agricultural value chains are rapidly evolving (Reardon, 2015; Reardon et al., 2021; Barrett et al., 2022), research attention has increasingly taken notice of the important role played by actors in the ag ricultural midstream. The agricultural midstream consists of activities that take place after production but before final sale to consumers, with existing literature highlighting transportation, trading/wholesaling, processing/packaging, and storage as key activities (Reardon, 2015; Ambler et al., 2022a). However, even as research on the agricultural midstream has been growing, little is known about the poten tial financial needs or capabilities of midstream actors (Ambler et al., 2022a; Bellemare et al., 2021; Reardon and Minten, 2021). If midstream actors face meaningful financial constraints in growing their businesses, it can hinder employment opportunities, increase consumer food prices, depress agricul tural producer prices, or constrain growth more broadly.

Investing in Resilience: Ensuring a Disaster-Resistant Future focuses on the steps required to ensure that investment in disaster resilience happens and that it occurs as an integral, systematic part of development. At-risk communities in Asia and the Pacific can apply a wide range of policy, capacity, and investment instruments and mechanisms to ensure that disaster risk is properly assessed, disaster risk is reduced, and residual risk is well managed. Yet, real progress in strengthening resilience has been slow to date and natural hazards continue to cause significant loss of life, damage, and disruption in the region, undermining inclusive, sustainable development. Investing in Resilience offers an approach and ideas for reflection on how to achieve disaster resilience. It does not prescribe specific courses of action but rather establishes a vision of a resilient future. It stresses the interconnectedness and complementarity of possible actions to achieve disaster resilience across a wide range of development policies, plans, legislation, sectors, and themes. The vision shows how resilience can be accomplished through the coordinated action of governments and their development partners in the private sector, civil society, and the international community. The vision encourages “investors” to identify and prioritize bundles of actions that collectively can realize that vision of resilience, breaking away from the current tendency to pursue disparate and fragmented disaster risk management measures that frequently trip and fall at unforeseen hurdles. Investing in Resilience aims to move the disaster risk reduction debate beyond rhetoric and to help channel commitments into investment, incentives, funding, and practical action

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the vulnerability of agrifood systems to shocks and stresses and led to increased global food insecurity and malnutrition. Action is needed to make agrifood systems more resilient, efficient, sustainable and inclusive. The State of Food and Agriculture 2021 presents country-level indicators of the resilience of agrifood systems. The indicators measure the robustness of primary production and food availability, as well as physical and economic access to food. They can thus help assess the capacity of national agrifood systems to absorb shocks and stresses, a key aspect of resilience. The report analyses the vulnerabilities of food supply chains and how rural households cope with risks and shocks. It discusses options to minimize trade-offs that building resilience may have with efficiency and inclusivity. The aim is to offer guidance on policies to enhance food supply chain resilience, support livelihoods in the agrifood system and, in the face of disruption, ensure sustainable access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to all.

World Development Report 1994 examines the link between infrastructure and development and explores ways in which developing countries can improve both the provision and the quality of infrastructure services. In recent decades, developing countries have made substantial investments in infrastructure, achieving dramatic gains for households and producers by expanding their access to services such as safe water, sanitation, electric power, telecommunications, and transport. Even more infrastructure investment and expansion are needed in order to extend the reach of services - especially to people living in rural areas and to the poor. But as this report shows, the quantity of investment cannot be the exclusive focus of policy. Improving the quality of infrastructure service also is vital. Both quantity and quality improvements are essential to modernize and diversify production, help countries compete internationally, and accommodate rapid urbanization. The report identifies the basic cause of poor past performance as inadequate institutional incentives for improving the provision of infrastructure. To promote more efficient and responsive service delivery, incentives need to be changed through commercial management, competition, and user involvement. Several trends are helping to improve the performance of infrastructure. First, innovation in technology and in the regulatory management of markets makes more diversity possible in the supply of services. Second, an evaluation of the role of government is leading to a shift from direct government provision of services to increasing private sector provision and recent experience in many countries with public-private partnerships is highlighting new ways to increase efficiency and expand services. Third, increased concern about social and environmental sustainability has heightened public interest in infrastructure design and performance.