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In 2019, Nigerian entrepreneur Dr. Ayoola (Ayo) Oduntan is accelerating distribution of Noiler, a genetically optimized breed of poultry, to smallholder farmers across Nigeria. The bird was bred to be productive as a source of both meat and eggs and to thrive in the rural Nigerian context-e.g., living in harsh outdoor conditions and relying on forage and kitchen scraps for food. The Noiler breed was developed by Oduntan's poultry business, called natnudO Group, which operates feed mills and hatcheries, processes broilers and layers, and sells poultry products to Nigerian restaurants and retailers. The Group had revenue of about $64 million in 2019. Oduntan wants to get Noilers into millions of poor households in Nigeria and other West African countries as fast as possible. His mission is to tackle protein-related malnutrition in Nigeria, which afflicts millions of children. He has devised a unique value chain model to build sustainable markets for Noilers, with a focus on creating economic opportunity for poor farmers, empowering women, and most of all getting protein to children who need it. In late 2019, he is considering next steps for the Noiler enterprise. Should it remain within a commercial entity or be spun off as a not-for-profit? What would that look like? Should he sell the genetics? How important is it for this to remain a Nigerian enterprise versus bringing in multinational partners? What could reinforce or threaten the model's scalability and sustainability?

Grupo Éxito, a leading South American retailer, faced declining market shares in Colombia in 2019 with the arrival of low-cost competitors and emerging digital trends. Originally founded in Medellín, Éxito had over the course of its seventy-year history evolved from a small textile shop into a retail powerhouse, with 1,533 stores and operations in 2018 across four countries in South America and $18.6 billion in consolidated revenues. In its home country, Éxito had grown through a series of acquisitions, consolidating a multi-brand and multi-store format strategy to cater to customers across all income segments. By 2018, the company had a total of 554 points of sale across the country. However, with the arrival of hard discount retailers, Éxito began to gradually experience a decline in its market shares, particularly at its low-cost store brands. Colombian consumers were also changing their grocery shopping habits, as they became more digitalized. Not only were retailers beefing up their digital retail platforms by launching new applications with personalized services, but they were also allying with partners such as Rappi-Colombia's largest last-mile delivery company- to speedily deliver products to customers' homes. Carlos Mario Giraldo, Éxito´s Chief Executive Officer since 2013, and top management were faced with the challenge of simultaneously maintaining Éxito´s vast operations in the country and battle the current and upcoming threats in the competitive Colombian grocery retail market. Should the company battle head to head with discounters or bet on differentiated strategies at its more premium stores and digitalized ways to serve customers? Would these strategies pay off and allow Éxito to gain more market share in the future?

Agriculture was Ireland's largest indigenous industry. Its agri-food sector was export-driven, with almost 90% of production exported. Bord Bia was the Irish government agency charged with the promotion, trade development and marketing of the Irish food, drink and horticulture industry. Bord Bia's CEO, Tara McCarthy, was shaping the government agency's new strategy amid a volatile socio-political environment (with Brexit and other cross border trade issues) and in light of consumer trends in the macro food and drink industry.

The ongoing U.S.-China trade war had lifted South American soybean prices to 20% higher than the CBOT price. Domestically, a severe drought had undermined Argentina's 2018 soybean production, leaving Argentine soy crushing plants extremely undersupplied. Pressed by the country's economic emergency, Argentina´s President Macri had imposed new tariffs on farming exports. With these and other factors in mind, Enrique and Alejandro Duhau had to decide what to plant the following year and whether to lease additional land for agriculture. Should they prioritize the market opportunity for soybeans over technical factors such as crop rotation? What risks would increasing the amount of leased land entail? Would it prove convenient to pay a higher-than-usual price to secure more leases? Was their hedging strategy appropriate or should it be revised based on the current context?

In December 2017, Marc Freed-Finnegan and Jonathan Wall, the co-founders of retail technology company Index, had to discuss the company's direction as they entered 2018. Five years earlier, Freed-Finnegan and Wall had founded Index after observing the technological advantages that Amazon and other online retailers had over brick-and-mortar retailers. Index's first product was a customer database tool that allowed brick-and-mortar retailers to collect customer contact information (e.g., email addresses) at the time of checkout. Index soon added automated marketing tools and payment/security tools (e.g., encryption) to its product portfolio. However, selling to large retail chains had proved challenging-many stakeholders were involved in the buying decision, creating a long sales process, and some retailers did not understand why they should trust a small, young company with their payment security. By late 2017, Index had made some changes to reduce the average sales cycle, but there was still room for improvement. Now, Index was preparing to launch a new product, Index Connect, that would essentially allow retailers to pool customer contact data and be more competitive with Amazon. Participants must evaluate whether Index was taking the right approach to sales and marketing and consider how the company could position Index Connect to be a success.

The June 2017 news that e-commerce giant Amazon was paying $13.7 billion for organic supermarket chain Whole Foods precipitated a broad sell-off in the shares of grocery retailers and suppliers. Behind the precipitous declines lay recognition that Amazon's bold move into brick and mortar assets offered transformational opportunities. Amazon could gain expertise in perishable product sales and procurement, plus access to 30 million well-off shoppers and 463 grocery stores in key U.S. markets. Whole Foods could absorb Amazon's technology and process expertise to modernize and reduce its operating costs, which were among the highest in the industry. For grocery retailers and suppliers, the deal portended increased competitive pressures in a saturated market. As 2018 dawned, all parties were assessing the deal's implications. Had the stock market overreacted to news of the deal? Why was Amazon buying Whole Foods? What were the long-term implications of the deal for the food value chain?

Molino Cañuelas was a vertically integrated food company with a management system that allowed it to innovate and grow systematically. With sales of $2 billion in 2016, the firm not only produced flour, vegetable oil and packaged food products; it also owned a port terminal, a packaging plant and an Agribusiness Services Division to support over 8,000 agricultural producers. CEO and Chairman Aldo Navilli, who had run the company since 1986 and had developed its management system, wanted to ensure that as the company grew and expanded, it would maintain its culture and working style. The company was exporting to 32 countries and had manufacturing plants in Brazil and Uruguay. As it continued its international expansion, should it follow the same vertical integration strategy in other countries or should it develop its retail business through partnerships or alliances?

In 2017, Joelle Faulkner, CEO of Area One Farms, a Canadian private-equity fund focused on investing in the best Canadian farms and helping them expand, considered the merits and disadvantages of expanding her business to the U.S. While the markets shared some similarities, Faulkner did not know the U.S. market as well as the Canadian one. Could her joint venture partnership model work as well in the U.S. as it had in her home country?

It is July 2017, and Dr. Nteranya Sanginga, the director general of the Nigeria-based International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), is making progress toward two of his primary strategic objectives for the nonprofit research Institute: 1) to scale the impact and reach of some of the IITA's most commercially viable products and technologies by working with the private sector, and 2) to address Nigeria's massive youth unemployment problem by engaging young people in agribusiness. To achieve his first goal, Sanginga in 2013 established a business incubation platform (BIP), which was tasked with establishing pilot production facilities to illustrate that a select number of IITA products could be profitably manufactured and sold to an existing market. Sanginga hoped that the BIP would attract interest from private sector companies compelled by the business case for taking a particular technology to scale. To achieve his second goal, Sanginga had founded a youth "agripreneurs" program, which would train young university graduates on improved agricultural practices, food processing, and strategies for starting an agribusiness. Since its establishment in 2012, the program had enrolled four cohorts of young people in Ibadan (a total of 70 people), and expanded to four other states in Nigeria and five additional African countries. While both programs were making progress, challenges remained. Sanginga had originally hoped that the agripreneurs program would launch dozens of small businesses, but as of mid-2017, it had produced just four independent start-ups. Most of the program's agripreneurs in Ibadan (53 of the 70) remained affiliated with the IITA. Poor access to commercial loans, which carried interest rates up to 30%, was the primary issue preventing them from starting businesses. The BIP, too, faced challenges. Chief among them was a severe cash flow constraint that prevented Schreurs from properly forecasting and investing resources

This case describes the business model and workplace philosophy of NatureSweet, a privately owned, vertically integrated greenhouse grower and marketer of fresh tomatoes with sales across the U.S. and $329 million in 2016 revenues. CEO Bryant Ambelang treated NatureSweet more like a consumer-packaged goods manufacturer than an agricultural producer, with a focus on consistency, branding, margin and price stability, and a frontline-worker-centric production model inspired by the Toyota Production System. Workers-who, because of NatureSweet's year-round greenhouse production model, were employed full time-were empowered with training and productivity incentives, allowing them to earn well above the minimum wage and advance their careers within the company. Indeed, improving the lives of workers was the explicit purpose of NatureSweet's operations. Through its financial incentives, personal and professional development initiatives, and worker-appreciation programs, NatureSweet had cultivated a truly unique, uplifting workplace culture in its Mexico operations. Ambelang aspired to replicate the model in the U.S. as a way of demonstrating the potential to "transform the lives of agricultural workers in North America." But in late 2017, the Arizona-based production operations that NatureSweet had acquired in 2014 were still struggling to attain the successes achieved in Mexico. This case describes NatureSweet's history, achievements in Mexico, and challenges in Arizona, inviting students to evaluate the keys to NatureSweet's success in Mexico and analyze their potential for replication in the U.S. Will Ambelang succeed in Arizona, and in doing so demonstrate that it is possible to transform the lives of agricultural workers in North America?

Nadir Godrej Chairman and B Yadav MD, Godrej Agrovet Ltd ( GAVL) grapple with the challenge of growing their cattle feed business - should they integrate vertically despite the challenges ofthe dairy industry, and risk the profitability of the current business ? The ban on cow slaughter in India adds to the dilemma.

In 2016, the millennial generation (those age 19 to 35 in 2016), the largest generation by population in the U.S., was entering its prime home buying, family forming, earning and spending years. This generation was showing different beliefs and behaviors than previous generations-beliefs and behaviors that were having a significant impact on the overall economy and in particular on the food industry. This note explores the millennial generation, how it differs from previous generations, and examples of how it is impacting the food industry.

This case illustrates how Chilli Beans became the most popular sunglasses retailer in Brazil and the issues it faced when expanding into the U.S.

This background note explains Cuba's past and current agriculture policies, as well as provides insights into its future potential as relations with the U.S. normalize.

Hain Celestial manufactured natural and organic food and personal care products to be sold to retailers of these products. The company had grown successfully and profitably through acquisitions and organically for two decades. In late 2015, Hain faced challenges on several fronts. First, new consumers were interested in these products and these consumers had characteristics different from those of historical consumers in the segment. Second, the natural and organic market segment had been growing faster than the conventional market overall and was expected to continue to do so. This had caused large conventional manufacturers to enter this space increasing the level of competition for Hain. Third, this segment growth was also attracting a wider range of retailers wanting to sell these products and some of these retailers were introducing their own natural and organic brands.