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Moderated e-mail conference on small farms and food security

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Mon, 2 Apr 2018 19:04:14 +0000
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Dear all,

Here are the aggregated answers from the recently received input on topic #1 "Cooperation among small farms” - Peter

Q1.1/10 - Question: “1.1 What are different experiences of small farms’ cooperation in other regions? How has this changed over the past 10 years?”

From: Nasreen Sultana <[log in to unmask]> (Bangladesh)
I am Nasreen Sultana, Country Project Manager of project “Capacity Development for Agricultural Innovation Systems (CDAIS)” run in eight countries and I manage this project in Bangladesh.

Let me share with you some early experiences of small farmers’ cooperative in one region of Bangladesh. In 1959, a cooperative rural development program was launched by the Bangladesh Academy for Rural Development (http://www.bard.gov.bd/ ) in Comilla, a South Eastern district of Bangladesh. Which was later known as Comilla Model of cooperative (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comilla_Model ).

The model was implemented in four sub-districts of Comilla with four distinct components:
1. Two tier Cooperatives - Krishak Samabaya Samity (KSS, i.e. farmers’ cooperative association) and Sub-district (Thana/Upazila) Central Cooperatives Association (TCCA)
2. Rural Works Program (RWP)
3. Sub-district (Thana /Upazila) Irrigation Program (TIP)
4. Sub-district (Thana /Upazila) Training and Development Centre (TTDC)
Considerable emphasis was placed on distribution of agricultural inputs and extension services.

The main features of the Comilla Model were:
• The promotion of development and refining of various public and private institutions, and establishing a system of interrelationships between them;
• Involvement of both public and private sectors in the process of rural development;
• Development of leadership in every village, including managers, model farmers, women organizers, youth leaders, and village accountants, to manage and sustain the development efforts;
• Development of three basic infrastructures (administrative, physical and organizational);
• Priority on decentralized and coordinated rural administration in co-ordination with officials of various government departments and the representatives of public organizations.
• Integration and co-ordination of the various developing services, institutions and projects;
• Education, organization and discipline;
• Economic planning and technology;
• Development of a stable and progressive agriculture to improve the conditions of the farmers and provide employment to rural labor force.

For various reasons the Comilla Model was unable to achieve its goal. A report on 1979 showed that 339 of the 400 cooperatives were non-functioning. Four factors were pointed out as the reason, such as fraud/lack of internal controls, stagnation, diversion of funds, and ineffective external supervision.
While working for CDAIS project we observed that, sustainability of small holders’ cooperation is very much challenging in Bangladesh. Most of the smallholders’ groups are project bound and activities become slow or dormant after completion of the project.
The major reasons for the unsustainability of these groups are:
1. The benefit of working together is not properly understood by the smallholder farmers
2. Members lack of adequate leadership quality to lead the group
3. Collaboration attitude is limited, and
4. There is a lack of trust and confidence

All these indicate that for sustainability of groups/cooperatives, there are no other alternatives than improving or strengthening soft skills of smallholder farmers.

Five commodity-based niches/clusters, such as Mango, Fish, Pineapple, Summer Tomato and poultry were identified to work with our project. Each niche is composed of several stakeholders such as; a producer group (mostly small holder farmer), input suppliers (fertilizers, pesticides, vet medicine, feed etc.), transporters, extension service providers, researchers, marketing department, processors, consumers, etc. With the objective to develop their capacities, first of all their capacity needs were identified during Capacity needs assessment workshops using several facilitation tools/methods such as visioning, net mapping, problem/solution tree and timeline analysis and questionnaire. This process has been support by national innovation facilitators trained to support the niches. After a marketplace event bringing their needs to the attention of service providers and the introduction of coaching plan niche stakeholders showed much interest in group formation. As a result, the Shibganj Mango Growers’ Association (for Mango niche) has been formed and a tomato processing group was formed by the female stakeholders of the summer tomato niche. The project supports the groups in developing skills they have identified they need to collaborate with other stakeholders to produce and access markets.

With our new CDAIS project, local stakeholders are not just recipients but play an active role in what they want to achieve, what they feel they need to develop to achieve their desired change. We hope that this approach will lead to more sustainable smallholder groups.

Q1.3/7  - Question: "1.3.  Are there any forms of collaboration between small farms that work particularly well? Why? How does the size of the farm affect cooperation?”

From: Mahesh Chander <[log in to unmask]> (India)

Towards the end of this conference, I present the possible scenarios for India,

1. Will small farms disappear?: replacing small holdings by big farms on leased lands and managed by corporates for efficient farming practices, economies of scale, quality, market linkage, input management and making small farmers laborers in their own farms! This may mean more specialized & mechanized operations concentrated on a few commodities having comparative advantage. Horizontal cooperation among small scale famers replaced by vertical cooperation with increasing mechanization, globalization, international trade including for certified organic products.

2. Small farmers joining hands forming Farmer producer organizations/Companies for which policy support is now available. Unlike cooperatives promoted by government earlier, farmers may realize themselves that there are benefits in forming the collectives for buying inputs and better marketing of farm processed products.

3. Farmer vs Agripreneurs: Small scale farmers will be compelled to take up farming as business to sustain. The agripreneurship would mean farmers taking up the role of  traders, processors and retailers, including business services, such as agro-dealers, production services, equipment services, market information services, financial service providers that support the value chain.

4. The smallholder farming landscape is rapidly changing owing to several mega trends createing both challenges and opportunities for rural communities in their efforts to commercialize. Successful rural actors will need to take on new skills, partnerships and technologies to diversify their on and off-farm activities to thrive.

5. Within this rapidly changing environment, farmers and their rural advisory service providers must learn new skills and find new ways of working together to develop types of “inclusive business models” that help link diverse farmers and entrepreneurs to growth markets. One of the solutions to help with rural commercialization is to support the growing numbers of agripreneurs, who could play a catalytic role in generating new income streams and jobs.  Politicians, practitioners as well as scientists have recognized that farmers, processors and local service providers increasingly require agripreneurship support, besides sound management and craftsmanship, to be sustainable in the future.


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