It could be and I know there’s at least one non-profit working in this space (Taimaka Project). One Acre Fund also provides loans to farmers. However I don’t think this intervention seems likely to be much better than cash transfers, and could be worse (because less targeted and involves a lot more overhead).
Oh, also Tyler Cowen and Esther Duflo sort of discuss this question in their Conversation (ctrl + f “invest” or “return” to find the discussion). Duflo says:
So there are some people with very high rates of return, as you were saying, 50 percent or 60 percent. But there are not very many. I think that is why the . . . First of all, there are not very many, and they are not necessarily the one that have access to money. That’s one of the big reasons why the cost is lower, is that there is a mismatch between the investment opportunity and who has the money. And that’s what my colleagues call misallocation.
It could be and I know there’s at least one non-profit working in this space (Taimaka Project). One Acre Fund also provides loans to farmers. However I don’t think this intervention seems likely to be much better than cash transfers, and could be worse (because less targeted and involves a lot more overhead).
Oh, also Tyler Cowen and Esther Duflo sort of discuss this question in their Conversation (ctrl + f “invest” or “return” to find the discussion). Duflo says:
Thanks for the additional info!