Frank Hicks converses with Tzejalchen farmers in Mexico on a Root Capital trip. Credit: Root Capital
Frank Hicks is the co-founder of Nature For Justice, a conservation and community development organization that employs nature-based climate solutions to restore ecosystems, build climate resilience, and promote sustainable livelihoods. His involvement with Root Capital goes back over two decades. He first learned of us while working for a Root Capital loan recipient, a cocoa enterprise in Costa Rica. Through his subsequent service as a board member, board chair, and advisor for Root Capital, Frank has contributed his extensive expertise in rural economic development, biodiversity conservation, and climate change resilience in emerging markets.
“Root Capital occupies a unique niche in the agrifinance market. It is one of the few financial organizations I know that provides advisory support in addition to loans,” says Frank.
During his tenure as board chair, Frank’s breadth of experience proved critical. When hundreds of thousands of acres of coffee farming systems in Latin America were decimated by a virulent fungal disease, we found ourselves looking at what types of additional support we could provide to strengthen climate resilience in farming communities.
The Challenge
In 2012, the extreme weather in Latin America brought tremendous challenges to the coffee industry. Abnormal rains and extended dry periods set the stage for a coffee fungus called leaf rust, or la roya in Spanish, to sweep through coffee-growing regions, triggering massive economic disruption, including the loss of over 500,000 coffee-related jobs and $1 billion in revenue.
It soon became clear that in order to survive la roya’s devastating effects, agricultural enterprises needed longer-term loans and a broader range of advisory services. In addition to financial capacity building, farmers were in dire need of renovation and rehabilitation plans built on climate-smart practices.
Maria Eufemia Madonado Ocaño, a Peruvian coffee farmer and member of Root Capital client UNICAFEC, holds a leaf infected with la roya. Credit: Root Capital
Our Collaboration
In 2012, in response to the crisis, Root Capital launched the Coffee Farmers Resilience Initiative (CFRI), a $7-million, multi-year initiative to combat the coffee leaf rust epidemic in Latin America. We diversified our offerings to include new loan products and advisory services. We introduced longer-term loans to support all stages of coffee processing, not just the immediate post-harvest loans we had historically offered.
“We decided to expand our capacity-building services beyond financial advice to incorporate agronomic advisory,” says Frank. “This was the first time that Root Capital employed agronomists to provide advice and help clients develop a management plan to respond to la roya.”
Client fulfillment of management objectives, recommended and evaluated by the agronomists we recruited, triggered the release of the next installment of their long-term loan. This was a major breakthrough in Root Capital’s service delivery, and an approach that we have maintained as the need to address climate change adaptation and resilience has grown.
The Impact
These first steps to offer agronomic and climate resilience advisory during the coffee leaf rust epidemic led to an increased focus on building client capacity in climate resilience and adaptation, ultimately resulting in Root Capital’s Climate Resilience Roadmap, which Frank helped to develop as an advisor to us once he stepped off the board. Launched in 2020, this six-year strategy supports urgent climate action in rural communities by strengthening the resilience of agricultural enterprises.
“Whereas Root Capital’s response to la roya was reactive, its current approach to helping clients adjust to increasingly intense and erratic weather conditions has really become proactive,” Frank explains. “The team is focused on how regenerative agricultural practices and technology can help borrowers adapt and become more resilient to climate change.”
Learning from this experience, we now take a proactive approach to anticipating and listening to our clients immediate and long-term needs. It’s why we offer a comprehensive menu of advisory services, meeting our clients wherever they are on their journey to strengthen their capacities, and build lasting partnerships together.
“Root Capital has always been a thought leader and innovator in the rural financial space, and it continues to push the frontiers of what can be done in terms of lending and impact,” Frank concluded.