Documentation of Proceedings on the Agri-Microfinance Roundtable Discussion

This document reports on a roundtable discussion on the “Agricultural Microfinance Research Project”. The discussion begins by stating the rationale of the project: “to address the lack of provision of financial services to the agricultural sector by documenting successes and failures of existing agricultural microfinance programs to come up with relevant lessons and insights that can be incorporated into initiatives”. The objectives of the discussion were to:

• Identify issues related to agricultural microfinance;
• Solicit comments on the research design.

The report discusses the following issues related to agricultural microfinance:

• Access to credit;
• Agricultural income versus household income;
• Mitigating risks;
• The importance of savings;
• Lack of documentation of the dynamics involved in un-served areas.

The report presents the following information about the research design:

• Literature review;
• Areas that case studies need to address;
• Possible case leads;
• The names of institutions that volunteered to be the subjects of the case design;
• The research process.

The report concludes by presenting two exhibits:

• The list of participants in the agricultural microfinance round table discussion;
• The background of the Agricultural Microfinance Research Project.