FARMD Conference Speakers

Speakers

Participants at the conference benefitted from the insights and perspectives provided by several ag-risk management practitioners from producer representatives, traders, international buyers; as well as policy makers, development partners, academia and researchers. 

Bios of some of the conference speakers:

David Lehman

Managing Director, Commodity Research & Product Development, CME Group

David Lehman was appointed to his current position in February 2010. He is responsible for leading efforts to identify and develop new CME Group product and services opportunities related to both exchange-traded and over-the-counter (OTC) markets, maintaining viability of current product offerings and providing strategic insight into new markets, business development and research within the commodity space. Before assuming his current role, he most recently served as Director, Commodity Research and Product Development, since July 2007. Previously, Lehman also served as Managing Director and Chief Economist of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Prior to his appointment as Chief Economist, Lehman started at the CBOT in 1989 as a staff economist and held various research and marketing positions during his tenure there as well as working closely with regulatory staff at the exchange and at CFTC. Lehman earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Maryland.

David Lehman

 

 

 

Brian D. Wright

Professor and Chair of the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of California, Berkeley

Brian D. Wright was educated at the University of New England, in Armidale, Australia, and at Harvard University, where he received a Ph.D. in Economics. Wright research interests include economics of markets for storable commodities, market stabilization, agricultural policy, industrial organization, the economics of research and development, and the economics of conservation and innovation of genetic resources. He has co-authored and co-edited several books, including: Storage and Commodity Markets; Reforming Agricultural Commodity Policy; Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Genetic Resources at the CGIAR Centers, and Accessing Biodiversity and Sharing the Benefits: Lessons from Implementing the Convention on Biodiversity. Professor Wright has also published extensively in the leading journals in Economics and Agricultural Economics.

Brian Wright

 

 

 

Juerg Trueb

Managing Director, Swiss Reinsurance Company, Switzerland

Juerg Trueb is Head of Swiss Re’s Environmental & Commodity Markets department. The unit provides stakeholders of the agricultural and energy sector with financial instruments covering revenue risks with a special focus on solutions for intermittent sources of supply and demand as typically seen in renewable energy production, agriculture and retail energy. Solutions are in the form of derivatives, insurance and reinsurance transactions and offered on a worldwide scale. Prior to his current role, Trueb set up and managed Swiss Re’s Weather & Power Outage as well as the Emissions trading desk, and managed Swiss Re’s Atmospheric Perils unit. Furthermore he developed risk assessment and pricing tools for European windstorms, tropical cyclones and methods to steer portfolios of natural catastrophe reinsurance contracts. Trueb holds a PhD in Atmospheric Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and a master in Environmental Sciences.

Juerg Trueb

 

 

 

José Sette

Executive Director a.i., International Coffee Organization (ICO)

José Sette was appointed to his current position in 2010. He is the Head of Operations in charge of the Economics, Statistics, Information and Documents Sections for the ICO, following his appointment to this post in 2007. Jose Sette has more than 30 years of experience in coffee and international trade. Prior to joining the ICO, he worked in both public and private sector organizations in Brazil. At the Brazilian Coffee Institute, he was Head of International Treaties Division and responsible for relations with the ICO. Sette has also worked as a researcher for the Inter-American Development Bank, as a trader at Inter-Continental de Café and for a variety of trade associations in Brazil, including the Brazilian Association of Coffee Exporters and the Federation of Commerce of the State of Rio de Janeiro. Sette has a B.A. in Administrative Science from Yale University, and an M.B.A. (Finance) from American University.

Jose Sette

 

 

 

Michael R. Carter

Director of BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program, University of California, Davis

Michael R. Carter is professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis and directs the BASIS Collaborative Research Support Program which studies rural poverty alleviation strategies in Africa, Asia and Latin American. Carter’s research focuses on small farm development strategies, including asset transfer and financial market deepening programs. His current projects include analysis of poverty dynamics and productive social safety nets, and feature a suite of projects that design, pilot and evaluate index insurance contracts as mechanisms to alleviate chronic poverty and deepen agricultural and rural financial markets. This latter work is being carried out under the I4 Index Insurance Innovation Initiative, a joint venture of BASIS, USAID, Oxfam, the UN FAO and the Microinsurance Innovation Facility of the UN ILO. An elected fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association, Carter is a co-editor of the leading development journal World Development.

Michael Carter

 

 

 

Marc Sadler

Team Leader of the Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT) of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department, World Bank

Marc Sadler is the Team Leader of the Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT) of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank. He is an expert on commodity markets, logistics, trading and risk management. Before joining ARMT, Marc spent six years working as a consultant for the World Bank and FAO, specializing in the fields of agribusiness and agricultural policy in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey. Prior to working in development, Sadler spent nine years as an agricultural commodities trader (both import and export), based out of the Former Soviet Union. He has an M.A. in Jurisprudence from Trinity College, Oxford University. In his role as Team Leader of ARMT, Sadler advises both governments and agricultural supply chain stakeholders about risk assessment and management in a wide range of commodity sectors.

Marc Sadler

 

 

 

Shukri Ahmed

Senior Economist, Global Information and Early Warning System, FAO

Shukri Ahmed is currently a team leader for Early Warning and Vulnerability assessment and Analysis group within the Trade and Markets Division of FAO. He Joined FAO in 1998 as desk officer for countries in Asia followed by Eastern Africa and the Near East in monitoring and analysing their food security situation. His previous work experiences include field manager in the Ethiopian Rural Household Survey for the Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford. He also worked as an Economic Statistician at the Central Statistical Authority in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Ahmed is one of four principal investigators in the project “Ethiopian Project on Interlinking Index Insurance and Credit for Agriculture (EPIICA)” being piloted in Ethiopia under the sponsorship of “Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4)”. Main areas of work and interest include disaster risk management, risk response of small holder farmers, food security monitoring and early warning, and institutional issues in food security information systems and management. He has a D.Phil. and a M.Sc. in Agricultural Economics from the University of Oxford and a BA in Economics from the University of Addis Ababa.

 

Shukri Ahmed

 

 

 

John Baffes

Senior Agriculture Economist with the Development Prospects Group, World Bank

John Baffes is a Senior Economist with the Development Prospects Group. His responsibilities include commodity market monitoring and price projections for agricultural commodities as well as research on market structure and policy reform issues in developing and OECD countries. Since joining the World Bank in 1993, he has worked in several operational departments, including Mexico, Bangladesh, and various East African countries. He has written extensively in the areas of economic development, trade, and agricultural economics and contributes frequently to several internal and external World Bank publications. Baffes was a key contributor to the World Bank’s flagship publication Global Economic Prospects 2009: Commodities at the Crossroads. He is currently managing the commodity contribution to Global Economic Prospects as well as the World Bank’s price collection and forecasting process. John Baffes holds an M.S. in Agricultural Economics, from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Maryland.

John Baffes

 

 

 

Christopher L. Gilbert

Professor of Econometrics, University of Trento, Italy

Christopher Gilbert has previously held positions at Birkbeck, University of London, Queen Mary, University of London, the Free University, Amsterdam, and the universities of Oxford and Bristol. His research interests include food and other primary commodities, futures markets, risk management, African development issues, global economic institutions and the history and methodology of econometrics. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, the IMF, the IADB, the FAO, the OECD, UNCTAD and a number of private sector companies and partnerships. In the '80s, Gilbert worked as a consultant to the World Bank for the Commodity Research Unit.

Christopher Gilbert

 

 

 

Ian Dudden

Director of Commodity Derivatives, NYSE Liffe

Ian Dudden has nearly thirty years experience in the softs and agricultural commodities markets. He joined NYSE Liffe in 1996 and as Director, Commodity Derivatives has responsibility for Marketing, Sales and Product Development of the commodities portfolio, encompassing Cocoa, Robusta Coffee, White Sugar, Raw Sugar, Feed Wheat, Milling Wheat, Rapeseed, Rapeseed Oil and Corn. Prior to joining the exchange, Dudden worked at the commodity divisions of Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers, leading their cocoa trading activities in the Asian region.

Ian Dudden

 

 

 

Rod M. Gravelet-Blondin

Senior General Manager of Commodity Derivatives, Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE)

After starting his career at the national Department of Agriculture in South Africa, Rod represented the South African agriculture in Europe at the South African Mission to the European Union in Brussels and in Geneva at the Mission to the United Nations from 1980 to 1990. Upon his return to South Africa he was directly involved in the GATT (WTO) negotiations, various bilateral discussions and regional trade negotiations within Southern Africa. In June 1995, he left the Department of Agriculture and moved across to help establish the Agricultural Markets Division at the South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX). In 1996, he was appointed General Manager of the Division and assumed responsibility as Senior General Manager: Commodity Derivatives Division of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange of South Africa when SAFEX was bought by the JSE Limited in August 2001. Rod studied in South Africa and Belgium and has a particular interest in the public/private partnership in agricultural development with a bent towards agricultural marketing.

Rod Blodin

 

 

 

Hans-Peter Egler

Head of the Division for Trade Promotion of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)

Hans-Peter Egler has been Head of the Division for Trade Promotion of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) since 2001 and is responsible for trade-relevant technical cooperation with developing and transition countries (trade, environment and social standards). After studying economics and history, Egler entered Swiss government service in 1988 at the then BAWI (Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs). Having started his career with the introduction of office information, he was next assigned responsibility within BAWI for bilateral economic relations between Switzerland and Latin America. He then worked in the Swiss Development Cooperation Office in La Paz, Bolivia, and until his appointment to his present post his work mainly focused on trade promotion in the area of investment funding measures and export financing in Latin America, Asia and Africa. Egler has been a guest of the SIPPO advisory board since 2000 as contact partner at SECO for programme and project implementation.

Hans Peter

 

 

 

Michael Roth

Senior Advisor, Financial System Development, Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)

Michael Roth joined the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ, formerly GTZ) GmbH, in 2004. Currently, he is working as a Senior Advisor in the competence area of Financial System Development leading a partnership with Allianz Insurance and consulting projects with a focus on agricultural insurance and microinsurance. He has vast experience in microfinance and banking. Two years ago, Michael was the team leader of a GIZ project with Postal Savings Bank of China (PSBC) for the establishment of PSBC’s successful small enterprise lending business. Before joining GIZ, he worked for HypoVereinsbank AG, in Germany. Michael Roth holds a Master of Economics from the Free University of Berlin.

Michael Roth

 

 

 

Helen Mastrocostas

Executive Director, Goldman Sachs commodities, Goldman Sachs

Helen Mastrocostas is the Executive Director, Goldman Sachs commodities. Helen joined Goldman Sachs in 2002 in Australia solely focused on commodities. Her clients in Australasia spanned corporates with commodity exposures to investors looking for portfolio diversification. Mastrocostas moved to London in 2008 to help develop the agricultural business in Europe, where she continues to cover corporates across the agricultural spectrum.

Helen M

 

 

Richard Choularton

Senior Policy Officer at the Office for Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, World Food Programme (WFP)

Richard Choularton supports the development of WFP’s policy on disaster risk reduction and is responsabile for developing innovative risk management solutions targeting the most vulnerable and food insecure populations. Choularton is a specialist in disaster risk management, with extensive experience in emergency preparedness, early warning and planning humanitarian crises. Among his main fields of interests are emergency management, food security, risk transfer, linking robust analysis with decision making, climate change adaption and disaster risk reduction. Prior to his current position in World Food Programme, Choularton served as the Director of Humanitarian Assistance at CHF International, as well as in various positions with the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) and the World Food Programme. He holds degrees in History and Political Science from Vanderbilt University, and in Risk, Crisis, and Disaster Management from the University of Leicester.

Richard Chourlatan

 

 

Joachim Herbold

Senior Underwriter in the Agricultural Division, Munich Reinsurance Company

Joachim Herbold joined the company in 1993 and has worked as an agricultural risk specialist and an underwriter on different continents and markets. He previously worked in greenhouse production research at Hohenheim University and as the manager of a greenhouse operation in Spain. Herbold is an agricultural economist and holds a PhD in agricultural sciences from Hohenheim University.

 

 

Jerry Skees

Professor of Agricultural Policy and Risk, University of Kentucky

Jerry Skees is H. B. Price Professor of Agricultural Policy and Risk at the University of Kentucky, and founder and president of GlobalAgRisk, Inc. Skees is a leading innovator of agricultural insurance programs, in particular, index insurance, developing new markets for sharing catastrophic risk in the United States and globally. The focus of GlobalAgRisk research and outreach fits directly into Skees’ University research program — to find improved ways to mix markets and government in sharing natural hazard risk. Since 1997, Skees has worked in emerging or developing economies, designing index insurance programs, with ongoing work in Mongolia, in a program that won the 2006 World Bank Golden Plough Award for innovation; in Peru, a new ENSO Insurance index product that offers early payment for catastrophic losses caused by El Niño; and in Vietnam, developing products using index insurance to protect rural lenders in the Mekong Delta from flood and coffee producers in the Central Highlands from drought. Current project support comes from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, UNDP and GiZ.

Jerry Skees

 

 

 

Erin Bryla Tressler

Consultant for the Agricultural Risk Management Team (ARMT), World Bank

Since 2001, Erin Bryla Tressler has been a consultant for the Agricultural Risk Management Team of the World Bank. During that time, she has been leading training on index based weather risk management and price risk management as well as managing a series of pilot programs on weather risk management and price risk management. She has worked primarily in sub-Saharan Africa on these topics but also in Latin American, the Caribbean, and South Asia. Erin has also consulted for the United Nations World Food Programme and Risk Management Solutions India on index insurance. Tressler has written and published on index-based insurance for agriculture in developing countries, price risk management, and innovative approaches to improving access to agriculture lending. Tressler holds a Master of Arts and a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University.

 

 

 

 

Jesús Antón

Senior Economist, Trade and Agriculture Directorate, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

Jesús Antón is a Senior Economist in the Trade and Agriculture Directorate of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) where he currently leads the project on risk management in agriculture. Previously, he has lectured in Economics at the Madrid Complutense University and ICADE (Madrid, 1992-98 & 2006-07) and was advisor of the Secretary General for Agriculture in the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture (Madrid, 2005-07). Antón also played a leading role in organizing the meeting of agriculture ministers at the OECD in February 2010.

Jesus Anton

 

 

 

Alexander Sarris

Professor, Department of Economics, University of Athens

Alexandros Sarris is a professor of the department of economics in the University of Athens, Greece. Until 2010, Sarris was the Director of the Trade and Markets Division of the FAO. He has advised extensively UN organizations, the World Bank, the European Commission, and other national and international agencies in field research and policy. He has served as chairman of the Center for Planning and Economic Research in Athens, as chairman of the Center for Development of Enterprise in Brussels, and in managerial and policy making capacities in several Greek and international research and trade related bodies. His interests include development economics; commodity market and price analysis; food and agriculture policy; applied international economics; agricultural risk management; macro-micro modelling, and income distribution and poverty. He has authored and co-authored several books and journal articles on various issues of international trade and development. In 1984, he received the Best Papera and in 1978, the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award, both by the American Agricultural Economics Association. Sarris holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has also held a faculty appointment at the University of California at Berkeley.

Alexander Sarris

 

 

 

Hansueli Lusti

Vice director, Schweizerischen Hagel-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft (Swiss Hail)

Vice director of the Schweizerischen Hagel-Versicherungs-Gesellschaft (Swiss Hail), President of AIAG's Adjusters' Committee (International Association of Agricultural Production Insurers). At Swiss Hail, Hansueli Lusti is responsible for the groundwork and organisation of damage evaluation and heads the field force. In AIAG, he presides over the Adjusters' Committee which promotes the exchange of knowledge on the evaluation of damage to agricultural crops. Following his training as a farmer and studying agronomics at the Swiss University of Agriculture, he has been working for Swiss Hail since 1999 and has been a member of its Executive Board since 2006.

Hans Lusti

 

 

 

Franck Galtier

Senior Economist, CIRAD

Franck Galtier is an economist. He studied economics at the University of Montpellier, France, and then finished his PhD in agricultural economics at the National School of Agronomy (Supagro) in 2002. The topic of this research was the efficiency of cereal markets in developing countries and the ways to improve it. Galtier currently works at CIRAD. First, on the economics of speciality coffees and on the topic of food price instability and food security. His main research activities are related to Africa, Central America and China. Galtier used to live in Mali, Benin, and Dominican Republic and is now based in Montpellier, France.

IFranck Galtier

 

 

 

Steven Schonberger

Regional Economist. Western and Central Africa Division. International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Steven Schonberger joined IFAD’s Western and Central Africa Division as Regional Economist in 2009. Prior to IFAD, Schonberger worked with the World Bank in the South Asia, Africa, Latin America and East Asia regions as a task manager, economist, country management and portfolio officer. Prior to the World Bank, Steven worked with international NGOs in West Africa and the U.S. on rural development and natural resource management issues, and with private banks in California, U.S. financing agribusiness. His areas of professional focus have been agricultural policy, rural poverty analysis, decentralization, land tenure and land reform, rural and microfinance. Schonberger has been a core author on the drafting team of the UN-Bretton Woods Comprehensive Framework for Action in Response to the Global Food Price Crisis.

Steven Schonberger