Financing Myanmar’s Smallholder Farmers With Patient Capital
We’re sometimes asked why we work in farming. Why, of all the many things we could task ourselves with, did we choose the incomes of smallholder farmers? The answer is…
Proximity Designs is a social enterprise that designs and delivers affordable, income-boosting products and services that complement the entrepreneurial spirit of rural families in Myanmar.
Smallholder farmers are often trapped in a life of subsistence, weathering crop failure and other setbacks on their own.
PD designs and delivers products, services, and policy solutions to increase productivity and incomes.
James Taylor and Debbie Aung Din Taylor are committed to treating people as customers, not as aid beneficiaries.
Nearly half a million pepole have benefited to date.
To transform Myanmar’s agricultural system into a vibrant source of food production, jobs, and incomes for rural households, while preparing Myanmar for the dual challenges of climate change and population growth.
Market Innovations and Policy Reform. Build a nationwide farm services platform that brings together service providers of indispensable products and services with the common goal of maximizing farm productivity, crop yields, and farm incomes in an environmentally sustainable way.
Co-Founder & CEO, Proximity Designs
Co-Founder, Proximity Research Lead, Proximity Designs
Jim Taylor and Debbie Aung Din currently serve as Proximity’s Chief Executive and Chief Economist, respectively.
They met doing development work in the Mississippi Delta in 1978, both motivated by a desire to improve the lives of people living in poverty. Their work led them to Cambodia, where they helped to rebuild the country’s rural health care and agricultural systems, and then to the Harvard Kennedy School, where they studied development economics and public policy analysis. Following that, Jim and Debbie moved to Indonesia, where they worked as economists on finance and environmental policies for the national government, and then to Debbie’s native Myanmar. Not wanting to participate in traditional aid work, they decided to create an organization to meet the needs of rural farming households by creating significant economic impact that could be scaled up quickly. In 2004, they moved to Yangon to work with iDE Myanmar to redesign treadle pumps for Myanmar's farmers. This organization was formalized as Proximity Designs in 2008.
Jim holds an MBA from the University of Southern California and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to his transition to the development sector, Jim worked in California as the chief operating officer of a leading provider of supply chain management software for the global fresh foods industry.
Debbie Aung Din holds a MA from Harvard University in Public Policy and Development Economics. She has previously worked for a number of NGOs, USAID, the UN, and the World Bank. In recognition of their work through Proximity Designs, Jim and Debbie have received the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship Award (2012), the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship (2012), the Ashden Award (2014), and the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship (2007-2008).
As of 2019, Proximity Designs has served over 600,000 rural households in the six major agro-ecological zones of Myanmar, providing them with improved irrigation, agronomy services, or farm financing. Data shows that adoption of Proximity’s irrigation products increases farmers’ income by $250 per year on average, and farmers who use their agronomy practices see an average net increase of $335 per year. Proximity Finance proved that the market for farm finance in Myanmar is commercially viable, even with smallholder farmers, and is now the largest private provider of farm credit in the country with over 100,000 active borrowers.
We’re sometimes asked why we work in farming. Why, of all the many things we could task ourselves with, did we choose the incomes of smallholder farmers? The answer is…