My former colleague, Stephen Biggs, who has died aged 83, was an agricultural economist whose work focused on India, Bangladesh and Nepal.
In the 1970s, as a programme officer at the Ford Foundation office in Bangladesh, he supported, with funding and advice, social experiments within government departments and among NGOs that could help small farmers access technological innovations (such as mobile pump sets for irrigation and small-scale power tillers) through cooperatives and small businesses.
