About This Book Strengthening financial institutions in rural areas is a cornerstone for mobilizing domestic capital through savings for future investments; it is also key to the development of a functioning financial sector that can serve the rural poor. Financial institutions working in rural areas face numerous constraints, such as poor physical infrastructure, dispersed demand, client profiles with high price and yield risks, scarce human capital, and limited collateral. These are some of the issues this book will address. This book is the result of the Symposium ”Finance for Food”. More than one hundred leading international experts from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe joined KfW to discuss the challenges and potentials of delivering sustainable financial services in rural areas. The participants came from About This Book Strengthening financial institutions in rural areas is a cornerstone for mobilizing domestic capital through savings for future investments; it is also key to the development of a functioning financial sector that can serve the rural poor. Financial institutions working in rural areas face numerous constraints, such as poor physical infrastructure, dispersed demand, client profiles with high price and yield risks, scarce human capital, and limited collateral. These are some of the issues this book will address. This book is the result of the Symposium ”Finance for Food”. More than one hundred leading international experts from Asia, Africa, the Middle East, the Americas and Europe joined KfW to discuss the challenges and potentials of delivering sustainable financial services in rural areas. The participants came from banks, microfinance institutions, governments, international financial institutions, academia and agricultural industry This book focuses on three main issues. First, institutional and process innovations dealing with agricultural risk and the use of modern technology to improve financial services in rural areas. It starts off with an overview of the current systems, players, and different types of agricultural finance. While observing global trends that influence agricultural production and demand, the emphasis is put on the relevance of financial services for the rural poor. This overview is then followed by a more detailed look into the fields of process innovation, value chains, innovative microfinance, and a case study of Access Bank Azerbaijan