Description
Host: Ellen Goddard
Brent Swallow – economics and property rights of digital services to agriculture
Berber Kramer – making insurance accessible in developing country contexts
Brent Swallow is an agricultural economist with 30 years of experience working at the interface of agriculture and the environment. He spent 20 years living and working in Africa, and has supervised UofA graduate students in research in South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, India, Peru, Bangladesh and China. He teaches courses on food systems and the economics of world food and agriculture. In Alberta he conducts research on conversion of agricultural land and food deserts. He has conducted research on climate smart agricultural practices in Kenya and China.
Berber Kramer is a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute and currently outposted to Nairobi, Kenya. Her research focuses on financial inclusion and resilience, and in particular on innovation in agricultural insurance and seed systems that can help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. She leads a research program that aims to strengthen agricultural insurance and finance in Ethiopia, India and Kenya through picture-based crop insurance, using smartphone images of targeted crops to monitor crop health and management.
