Among the visitors to 2008 Global Development Marketplace: Sustainable Agriculture for Development today was World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.

He's shown here with competition team winner Hannes  Dempewolf of the University of British Columbia, who is part of  Biodiversity International's $200,000 project in Trinidad and Tobago that will use cutting-edge genomics "to identify and distinguish rare cocoa cultivars from ordinary beans."

The beneficiaries will be subsistence farmers who will sell their enhanced beans to discriminating consumers at premium prices.  

Twenty-two project winners collected their crystal awards and grant checks in the 2008 Global Development Marketplace: Sustainable Agriculture for Development competition this morning.

The winners came from Sub-Saharan Africa, South and East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.  India, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Cambodia, and Vietnam were each the home of two award winners.  Altogether, 15 countries and Sub-Saharan Africa as a region were represented. 

The projects that made the final cut -- from 1,800 applications that were winnowed down to 100 from 42 countries -- promise to deliver a number of objectives and innovations to increase agricultural productivity, give farmers more land rights and link them to global markets, and, overall, reduce the deep poverty of rural regions in developing countries.

Among the 22 winning projects in the DM2008 competition was Agricultural Cooperatives for Biodiversity Conservation in Cambodia, and collecting the award were Enterprise Planner Adviser Karen Nielsen and Technical Adviser Tom Clements (in photo).

"W'e're quite excited about having our project recognized as one of the more innovative ones," said Nielsen, clutching her team's award.

Under the project, "Wildlife-friendly" products grown in conservation-protected areas in Cambodia will be marketed nationally, including at tourism centers, by cooperatives in 10 villages.

The $100,000 project is sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society through its Cambodia Program.

Subhas Managuli made it to the finalists' circle, buthis Best Practices Foundation proposal to improve livestock health for 2,000 small farmers in 20 villages in India didn't make the final cut that produced the 22 winners who were announced Friday morning.

"The idea is good, and I'll try to pitch it to other agencies," Managuli said as the closing ceremony wound up in the Atrium.  "I'm not going to give up. Absolutely."

While their booths were temporarily closed during the exhibition, finalists, along with development community representatives, participated in Knowledge Exchange technical assistance workshops -- like this one on capacity building.

Three DM2008 jurors who are past grant winners are sharing their well-learned lessons with the hundred finalists.

Take 2006 winner Florence Cassassuce (in photo at right), who brought her water-purifying UV-light bucket to 900 villagers on the rural outskirts of La Paz in Baja California, Mexcio. Cassassuce, implementing her project with the advice of World Bank Senior Environmental Specialist Ricardo Hernandez Murillo, installed 3,500 buckets toward the goal of 6,00, ahead of schedule. But the original buckets didn't always work well, especially in the field, and improvements had to be made with better, and faster, plastic-injection manufacturing.

Cassassuce said her team learned three lessons implementing their award-winning clean-water project:

As the recently named Director of the Agriculture and Rural Development Department -- one of DM2008's funders --Juergen Voegele is leading a vigorous effort to re-energize and broaden the World Bank's commitment to agricultural development. During his peripatetic rounds of the competition, Voegele sat down for this mini-interview:

Q. What are your impressions of what you see on the floor of the exhibition?

Among the 36 jurors for the DM2008 grant competition was Thomas Pomeroy, a former USDA bilateral trade director in key regions of the world who now consults in Sub-Saharan Africa. We did this mini-interview with Pomeroy:

 Q. As part of Team 10, you looked at 12 agribusiness proposals. What was your major criterion in scoring them?

 A. The first question was, will the project work, or does it have a reasonable possibility of working. The key thing is to sell the product for a reasonable price.

 Q. How did your candidates do?

A. I think we had some very good projects to look at. When I first read through them I thought only four were excellent. But after talking with participants and resolving issues, I rated more that high.

 Q. Was it tough to make the final choices?

A $199,050 project that would produce sustainable charcoal from bamboo and benefit 250 women entrepreneurs in Mozambique is the winner of the Peer Choice Award by the 100 DM2008 finalists.

Nilza Hassane Puna, General Secretariat of the Association for Bamboo Promotion and Biodiversity Conservation in Mozambique, and Oliver Frith, Associate Program Officer of the Livelihood and Development Program of the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan -- the organization sponsoring the proposal -- accepted the award last night from Juergen Voegele, Director of the World Bank's Agriculture and Rural Development Department, at a reception for finalists.  (Photo at left.)

Oscar Chemerinski, Director of the Agribusiness Department at the International Finance Corp. -- the commercial development arm of the World Bank Group -- gave this mini-interview at DM2008:

Q. What's your reaction to what you see on the floor among the booths of the hundred finalists?

A. We are very excited about the enthusiasm that the Development Marketplace generates.We are very glad to see the opportunities that are emerging from private sector players throughout the world to look at innovative ideas to develop the agribusiness sector.

Q. Do you see the winning projects translating into projects that deliver positive results?

A. By all means. We have the projects who will benefit from the Development Marketplace awards. But many of the others will also be able to tap into financing from other sources, given the preparation and work that has gone into them, and the underlying business principles of what is being proposed.