"For agriculture to yield the greatest returns, development efforts must focus on the smallholder farming sector.
"The smallholder sector has to be encouraged and guided," he says.
After leaving school, he worked as a journalist for Home Gardening and the Smallholder and joined the Territorial Army.
Young people must also be encouraged to adapt the smallholder model they inherit if it is to survive the 21st century.
In one corner, agribusiness is perceived as more efficient and technologically savvy; in the other corner, the smallholder is portrayed as less productive and in need of charity.
"The smallholder growers in particular have little or no room to invest in the improvements in wages conditions and environmental practices that are needed to ensure sustainable production and trade in the longer term," he says.
The smallholder in this poor north-west corner of Brazil says his fields have had fewer than 10 days rain since January, which has made the earth so dry it is impossible to plough.
More controversially, Okot argues that DfID should not focus on those at the "low end of the value chain", ie the smallholder farmers themselves, but on businesses that can make a real impact on agriculture – not unlike her own.
Rather, he will seek out the respectful and elegiac views of the elders - the Cornish fisherman, the smallholder, and a lovely old villager who remembers eating swedes fresh from the turnip cutter.
An international campaign – Our Land; Our Business – is urging the Bank to abandon its Benchmarking the Business of Agriculture BBAA) programme, claiming it will serve only to encourage corporate land grabs and undermine the smallholder farmers who produce 80% of the food consumed in the developing world.
Most of the smallholder rice farmers are engaged in marketing activities either as sellers or buyers.
