We are mostly addressing production, processing, marketing, credit/financing, and logistics etc., ignoring human angle to the development process.
In other words, giving more importance to hard skills than soft skills. When we talk of cooperation, collaboration, association, organization, often soft skills matter more than hard skills.
In India, small scale farmers are being asked to organize into Self Help Groups (SHGs), Milk Cooperatives, or more recently into Farmer Producer Organziations/ Farmer Producer Companies.
The success of these groups depend much on their ability to understand each other well, which in turn depend on their abilities in soft skills like Communication (oral and written), Creativity, Problem-solving, Collaboration, Adaptability, Positivity, Learning from criticism, Working under pressure, Conflict resolution etc.
While in Business organizations, there is strong emphasis on soft skills training of employees, in agricultural/farm production this is largely ignored. I believe, time has come when we should start paying attention to soft skills training of farmers to reap maximum benefit from farming especially when farmers are being encouraged to come together and form groups and association to negotiate better deal for themselves by cooperating and collaborating.
I thank Teresa for bringing this issue to our notice stimulating us to think on these aspects as well while discussing a lot of hard skills aspects of agricultural production.
She has raised this issue elsewhere too citing example of Southern Europe, where many groups in society, do not have the soft skills needed for cooperation to be established with a larger group, in the long run, while asking the question: "Is this an issue in other countries too?" Certainly, I believe the Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Cooperatives in India could have been far more successful if they had or imparted good soft skills. Hope the stakeholders will take note of this important dimension, while talking of cooperation, collaboration, associations etc.