Kenneth Swanberg

Dr. Kenneth Swanberg is an agricultural economist with over 40 years of agriculture research, extension and farming systems development experience in South East Asia, Central Asia, Africa, the Near East, Latin America and the Former Soviet Union. He has had resident experience in Afghanistan, Kenya, Egypt, Armenia, Vietnam, Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia, long and short term assignments in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. He has a thorough knowledge of the complexities of agricultural production and extension systems, product nutrition, gender programs, food marketing and value-added processing. During his career, he has been responsible for directing the development of arid and semi-arid lands development in Kenya, research trials in steep semi-tropical laderas (mountain sides) in Colombia, Rain-Fed/Irrigation Districts in Mexico, high-rainfall (6,000mm) coca-lands in Bolivia and snow run-off poppy-infested flatlands in Afghanistan. In each case, he developed specially adapted programs to deal with the erratic climatic changes such as alternating seasons of high rainfall followed by droughts, floods and dust storms. Early in his career, Dr. Swanberg was one of the founders of the USAID adopted 'Farming Systems Strategy' (1980s), which demonstrated the value of on-farm trials, crop insurance, farmer training at demonstration sites, and direct farm-to-market marketing programs. In a subsequent assignment with HIID (Harvard Institute for International Development) in Kenya, he supervised the Integrated Agricultural Development Program of the World Bank with farm credit, marketing boards and an extensive monitoring and evaluation program, highlighting the role of women in farm production. One of his graduate students, Jedidah Gachanja, went on to become the Ministry of Agriculture's director of Farm Management. This work in Kenya was the foundation for the formation of a dry-lands ministry which he formulated in the mid-90s. On loan from Harvard to USAID's S&T Bureau, as Director of the Rural Institutions Division, Dr. Swanberg managed the Farming Systems Project, the Small Farm Market Access Program, developed the Contract Farming program, designed and wrote the RfP for the Communications for Technology Transfer in Agriculture project, managed the Food Security in Africa Project, supervised the Rural Savings Mobilization Project (formerly small farm credit) and designed the division's Extension project, with Illinois University's Burt Swanson and John Woods. He also worked with the Fragile Lands portfolio of projects. In the mid-80s, Dr. Swanberg was director of research in USDA/OICD for foreign currency funds, and led a team of US dry-land experts to India, to develop the potential for rain-fed and dry-lands development opportunities, using U.S. foreign currencies generated through the PL480 program. During this tenure, he also worked in Egypt, Israel, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Upon departure from the USDA, Dr. Swanberg held an AD appointment in the Africa Bureau of USAID, as director of agribusiness for the MDI portfolio under Warren Weinstein. He initiated over 50 potential joint ventures between US and African companies, led several OPIC agribusiness investment missions to Africa, and consummated twelve joint ventures with U.S. firms in textiles, seed production, shrimp trawlers, vegetable production, heavy vehicle workshop, and a tannery. Dr. Swanberg spent ten years on staff with DAI, during which time he developed a counter-narcotics proposal for Ecuador, a program to improve date production and processing in the Emirates, a flax-linen program in Russia, and a "Competitiveness Analysis" of horticulture in six Asian countries, while serving as the COP for the Regional Agribusiness Project - RAP. In Egypt, Dr. Swanberg developed a "Leasing and Management Contracts Guidelines" for the Minister of Public Enterprise and designed and introduced the Egyptian Cotton Logo for the U.S. firm WestPoint Stevens, for placement on sheets and towels made from Egyptian cottons. Dr. Swanberg's work in nutrition stems from his PhD thesis, which analyzed the nutritional impact of market system reform in Colombia, analyzing consumption patterns to determine protein, calorie and vitamin price and income elasticities and was published in the Stanford Food Policy Research Journal. His other work in nutrition, demonstrating the delivery of Vitamin A through horticulture crops in the MARD project in Nepal, was published at a conference in Cairo, for the Vitamin A Consultative Group. Dr. Swanberg's work on gender issues was demonstrated in his analysis of the 'green bean revolution' in Kenya, where women grew green beans for export to Marks and Spencer in England, which is still ongoing 30 years later. His nutrition and gender work led to his drafting of USAID's Micronutrient Development Project RfP. Dr. Swanberg's expertise covers agricultural production and the design and management of extension systems for grains, legumes and high value horticulture plus livestock - large and small ruminants, agriculture's contribution to nutrition, women as contract growers and marketing agents, agribusiness and value-added processing, both dry-land and rain-fed crop production, agricultural commodity markets and value chain analysis, and agricultural policy formulation and implementation. Dr. Swanberg has introduced several innovative intervention techniques for USAID and the World Bank. As mentioned above he designed the "Farming Systems Approach" to agricultural research and extension in the mid-'70s while he was with the International Development Research Centre of Canada, based on the experiences of the well-known Caqueza Project in Colombia. In 1976 he joined the Harvard Advisory Team in Kenya, and developed an extensive Monitoring and Evaluation system for their World Bank funded Integrated Agricultural Development Program. In USAID's S & T Bureau, he developed the Communications for Technology Transfer (CTTA) in Agriculture project, which successfully introduced new communications media and social marketing techniques for extension. The World Bank adopted this approach to replace the T & V system. Also while in USAID, he developed and refined the Contract Farming model for extension. Based on his Ph.D. thesis, Dr. Swanberg subsequently showed, in Colombia and Nepal, that the development of horticultural and other non-traditional cash crops has a significant impact on childhood nutrition, especially in the consumption of Vitamin A, generating an income elasticity of close to unity (2 published papers). Most recently, Dr. Swanberg has been developing a new approach to development assistance, insisting that the production of raw commodities is not sufficient and that including the value-added processing of most farm goods is essential if one is to reach competitiveness and be able to provide viable income and employment opportunities to farm families. And in his last several assignments, he has successfully developed fruits and vegetables to substitute for coca in Bolivia, poppy in Afghanistan, wheat in Armenia and rice in Egypt, and ultimately as the principal intervention tool for counter-insurgency. In 2007-2009, he developed an innovative approach to horticulture development in Armenia under the auspices of the Millennium Challenge Corporation's Armenian Compact, by establishing "seed centers" for both vegetables and fruit trees. Over 30 vegetables were seeded in plastic and glass greenhouses, and then the 30 day old seedlings were transplanted to the open field, on a ratio of 100 hectares open field to 1 hectare seedbeds. The seedlings only took 45 to 50 days to mature, which allowed for four seasons of production or more per year. The fruit tree saplings, coming from grafted buds on dwarf root stock, started production just one year after transplanting. Dr. Swanberg is currently preparing a publication on the introduction of horticulture as a new and innovative approach to food security, based on crop profiles from over 15 countries. He went on to produce competitive analyses of horticulture and livestock studies and documentation in Armenia, Georgia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizstan, Ghana, Kenya, Bolivia and Ecuador. Dr. Samberg's most recent assignment has been as the Team Leader for the evaluation of the Community-Based Agricultural and Rural Development program in Afghanistan, implemented by the UNDP. Complete analysis of the 750 400m2 and 300m2 greenhouses was conducted before the collapse of the Afghan Government when the Taliban took over the country in August of 2021. After Vietnam, Dr. Swanberg attended Cornell to receive a Master's degree and Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics. As a result, he is well versed in the US Cooperative Extension and Research Model, and led the founder of this program to Mexico, to evaluate their adoption of this system in the '70s. Over the course of his career he has worked with professors from several US universities, and has designed many 'extension' programs for USAID - Farming Systems, Communications for Technology Transfer in Agriculture, Contract Farming, Micronutrient Delivery, and the US Cooperative Extension model for Afghanistan. From a management perspective, Dr. Swanberg has been a COP and DCOP on several IDRC and USAID projects, a Division Director in USAID/S&T and USDA/OICD, a lecturer at Harvard University, and a program director on many projects. He has managed projects and programs funded by USAID, as well as projects financed by IDRC, USDA, the World Bank, the ADB, Inter-American Bank, IFAD and the MCC. Dr. Swanberg has also worked closely with several of the International Agricultural Research Centers, such as CIMMYT, CIAT, ICARDA, CIP, IRRI and IFPRI. In his role with the COIN operations of Afghanistan (several projects from 2004-2016), he was in close relationship with DOD, and is perhaps the only one still working who established the first US Coin operation in Vietnam as an Infantry/Civil Affairs Officer, which was the Rural Development Cadre program - 50 teams of 50 Vietnamese Civil Defense forces protecting villages at night and doing development by day. (See last listing below.)