Elphège Ghestem-Zahir: An investment of time

By Andrew Schmidt | published 2 June 2021

Elphège Ghestem-Zahir, the Director-General of the development NGO Agrisud International, did not set out with this career path in mind.  “In the beginning did I see myself in the field of international development?”, she wonders aloud.  “Not really, actually not at all since I was studying the fine arts and also part of a dance troupe”, she continues.  And yet, here she is today.  At any given time more than 200 collaborators from Agrisud in the field are supporting Very Small Enterprises (VSE) in the agricultural sector around the world.  The goal is to create viable and sustainable businesses, based on economic as well as agro-ecological principles.

Though her path to Agrisud may not have been traditional, it has informed the vision which she brings to this organisation.

Out of office

Growing up, Elphège Ghestem-Zahir had a split-vision of the developing world. On the one hand, through her art and dance studies, she saw the vibrance, dynamism and creativity in these societies. The media, on the other hand, seemed focused only on desperation, poverty and misery.  She enrolled at a political science institute, hoping to make some sense of this disconnect.  During her studies she drifted away from the fine arts and towards issues of socioeconomic development, but from an academic standpoint. “With a masters degree in hand, I was being offered office jobs which did not seem like a good fit since I had no on the ground experience”, she says.   She turned down the offers. And she found Agrisud.

Over the past 15 years she has transitioned from a volunteer in Mali, then to Morocco as project coordinator, policy officer, deputy director of operations, and finally, since 2020, Director-General.  Through it all, belief in the importance of keeping a foot in the field, close to the people they are working with, has remained. “At the local level we need to adapt our language and look at the priorities of a whole variety of actors if we want to build more sustainable food systems together”, she notes.  And those actors need to work together too. Agricultural development is not just the business of farmers, she is quick to point out.  “It is the sum of these interactions that will determine whether we move towards food systems which are more or less sustainable”, she says emphatically.

The value chain…and beyond

The conversation moves towards one tool which contributes to the broader goal of food systems transformation: the value-chain approach.  This approach applies a systems lens, moving beyond an understanding of where impacts are happening to identify their drivers and barriers. She gives the example of a friend. This person, a farmer, made the switch to organic production methods a few years back. And yet, taking this decision at the level of the farm is not sufficient.  “How can farmers and producers move towards more sustainable modes of production”, she questions,  “if within that same value chain there are actors such as those in agrobusiness who have requirements for their products which cannot be met by producing more sustainably?”  She has seen producers run up against this catch-22 for far too long.  This is the type of barrier that the value-chain approach identifies.  If the current economic system is not ready to absorb the changing attitudes of producers, then the individual choices like the one made by her friend will not shift the needle of food systems as a whole.

She also highlights the effects of actors who may not be associated with the food sector at all.  “The politicians for one”, she begins. “If the law does not allow small farmers to sell their products directly to consumers without going through wholesalers, it is simply not worth the effort to grow a better quality product if that quality is not recognized”, she continues.  Political decisions trickle down to have enormous impacts on food systems. “An electoral calendar is not the same thing as an agricultural calendar”, she remarks, underscoring the challenge of aligning mismatched incentives. 

This difficulty in bringing actors together around a common vision gives her pause. “The dialogue between actors in the food sector is crucial, but it is not sufficient”, she argues.  “We need to be reaching the politicians, technicians, territorial planners, and educators”, she goes on.  Such a territorial approach is critical.  The priorities of, and interactions between these actors across a given area must be examined in order to promote and secure the development of farms in their agro-ecological transition process.

Time, proximity, and trust

At the other end, far from the halls of government, are the thousands of families that Agrisud works with.  Ms. Ghestem-Zahir is one of only nine people at the headquarters in southern France.  This people-centric, decentralised model is paramount.   “We work with people by being close to them”, she explains.  The technicians from Agrisud invest in VSEs over time, with a hands on approach over those weeks, months and sometimes years required for the farm to take hold.  She understands the importance of such proximity.  If someone is starting with nothing, how do you convince them that change is possible?  Her perseverance with this message, however, is informed by her own past.

She tells the story of her father. “In 1979 my father bought five head of cattle, of a breed that did not exist in the region, and tried to restart the defunct farm he inherited, from nothing”, she reminisces.  It took time.  A long time. But now, more than 40 years later, the farm is still going and that breed of cattle is one of the most sought after in the region.  Growing up in such an environment instilled a certain reverence for time. “What I say to the farmers we work with is that it is possible to change, but it cannot happen overnight”, she says.  “The most important resource we work with is not money, but time”, she goes on.  

This investment of time, and the physical closeness with the producers creates a dynamic of trust.  If and when the family decides to take the plunge, they do so knowing they are not alone.

The number one enemy of sustainable consumption and production

As the conversation winds down, she perks up, offering a final message. It pulls together several threads from throughout the discussion. “The biggest enemy of sustainable consumption and production that we face today is dogmatism”, she puts forward. She advocates for a certain level of pragmatism, and a corresponding level of wariness around the buzz words of the day. “What we need to find are the practical conditions where different actors can work together without putting the system at risk over time”, she insists.  

The theme of time has come back again, and Elphège Ghestem-Zahir sounds ready to spend some more in pursuit of a lasting shift to more sustainable food systems.