1. BIG IDEAS
New approaches to identify business and
development opportunities
F
or almost 40 years ICRISAT has had investigators that live in villages in India
collecting in-depth data on the village dynamics, issues and actions. This has
been supported by a team of economists, other social scientists and business
modelers. This unique data set and strong team can be leveraged to identify agribusiness and development opportunities.
What can be achieved
By tapping into the village dynamics data, we can:
▪▪ Facilitate new business opportunities for the private sector to capitalize on,
that cater to the needs of the farmers and rural communities.
This will include strengthening the capacity of the private sector in using this
village dynamics data and knowledge bank to identify needs and business
opportunities.
▪▪ Facilitate development initiatives particularly where public-privatecommunity partnerships are needed and develop the implementation
modalities.
This will include strengthening the public sector capacity in the use of social
science data and insights from the villages for evidence-based decision making
and formulating pro-poor policies.
Science with a human face
www.icrisat.org
November 2013

2. Approach
The approach to identify and facilitate business and development initiatives is as follows:
Identifying business and development opportunities
Deep insights of farmers’
needs and problems
which can be solved through public/private
partnerships
Deep insights of private sector
interests & needs
for information, knowledge and data for the
development of business proposals
Capacity building
of the private sector companies and public
sector organizations through face-to-face and
online training programs for:
- the use of village dynamic data for the
development of innovative business propositions
- database management and Knowledge Bank for
understanding key performance indicators and
evidence-based decision making.
Catalyst for stakeholder
partnering and support
Organize dialogues to increase interaction
between agricultural researchers, government
officials and private companies to increase
awareness about new opportunities and
actions required to realize
identified opportunities
Knowledge Bank and clearing house
on village agriculture and emerging business opportunities, set up as an on-line portal
The Village Dynamics data
This dataset is the longest ever time series panel
data with nearly 40 years of data collected by full
time investigators who live in the villages. It has
the most in-depth understanding of any village
level dynamics. It also includes the first and only
ever collated meso-level data in India. It also has
household and district level insights. The data covers:
Demographics
Crop production (inputs and outputs)
Livestock production (inputs and outputs)
Asset ownership
Consumption expenditure
The data warehouse, popularly known as the Village
Dynamics Studies Knowledge Bank, is an online
repository of panel data with user friendly data
retrieval system and online analytical processing
(OLAP) features. It is the first of its kind in the world
for management of rural household survey data,
providing online access to panel data and analytical
reports. It gives the users a number of options like
downloading Raw Data, Summary Reports and User
Defined Reports.
The Knowledge Bank integrated long-term Village
Level Studies panel dataset collected by ICRISAT for
the period 1975 to 2008 and data collected jointly
by ICRISAT and partners from 42 villages across India
and Bangladesh for the period 2009 to 2011.
Employment and wages
Involvement
Land and soil
Select a region to implement or incorporate this
approach into all the locations of interest.
South Asia (India and Bangladesh) will be the initial
target region. Lessons from South Asia can then be
articulated for other parts of Asia and Africa.
Market prices
Transaction
Rainfall
Gender disaggregation
Nutrition aspects
Gender empowerment factors
And more…
2
A concept note for
Ensuring nutritional security in rural India
Contact
Cynthia Bantilan, Director, Research Program on
Markets, Institutions and Policies
Email: c.bantilan@cgiar.org