Dear all, Here is today’s aggregated input on 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?” 1/ From: Raja Rathinam <[log in to unmask]> (India) Small cooperative/farmers are being helped by big cooperatives. For example "Amul milk cooperative" is a bigger one in this country. Recently UNDP initiated a small cooperative company to help the small farmers in an other region, Uttar Pradesh. Now the big cooperative has come forward to help the small one. This will be helping the small cooperative/farmers to get the inputs for enhancing the productivity of small farmers/small cooperative with the over all benefits of small farmers. It can be tried in other region also. 2/ From: Sergiu Didicescu <[log in to unmask]> (Romania) In the EU, the EIP-AGRI Operational Groups funded through the Rural Development Programmes are gaining a lot of ground since they have been introduced in 2014. Intended to bring together multiple actors such as farmers, researchers, advisers, businesses, environmental groups, consumer interest groups or other NGOs, their areas of action can be very broad. Field trials, pilot projects, joint working processes, short supply chain activities, initiatives for climate change adaptation and mitigation, collective environmental projects, and many more activities might be involved. The projects must always contribute to the EIP-AGRI objective of promoting agricultural innovation that is more resource efficient, productive, low emission, climate-friendly, and resilient and that operates in harmony with the essential natural resources on which farming depends. This might range from projects that target the development of new products, practices, processes and technologies to testing and adapting of existing technologies and processes in novel geographical and environmental contexts. An Operational Group is meant to be 'operational' and tackle a certain practical problem or opportunity, a 'need from practice’, that may lead to an innovative solution. Therefore, Operational Groups must draw up a plan, that describes their specific project and the expected results. Furthermore, the Operational Groups must disseminate the results of their project, through the EIP-AGRI network. 3/ From: Ghulam Qadir Arbab <[log in to unmask]> (Pakistan) Pesticides and fertilizers are important inputs that having effect on crop yield. Small farms due to lack of funds cannot purchase these inputs by paying cash. As I said (before), cooperatives are not (the) solution for small farms (especially) in Sindh province. Why, because, there is a corrupt system of cooperative registration process...Even after registration, the small farms are not that much efficient to run collective business due to lack education, willingness and top of all the volume of farm produce (even collective) is not that much that can bring remarkable difference in their earning. Let me give you an example of a project, I have evaluated. One project that worked for coastal belt small farms' livelihood and food security - facilitated by financing all cost of registration of cooperative. Thereafter, the project convinced 10 growers (members of cooperative) to sell their wheat on a collective basis. The average land holding of these farms was around 1 hectare. Most of these farms cultivated wheat and after storing wheat for home consumption, each farm had around 40 kgs surplus wheat to sell. The middleman in that area was purchasing 40 kgs of wheat at Rupees 900 by keeping Rs. 100 his own profit. The project negotiated with a big dealer in a town, who agreed to purchase wheat at Rs. 1000/- if wheat is transported to his mill gate. The project convinced small farm owners (cooperative members) to transport their wheat free of cost. The small farmers were happy to generate additional Rs. 100 and provided wheat to project. But in reality this has no impact on their income as additional Rs. 100 is nothing because on an average daily labour wage is Rs. 300/- so earning extra Rs. 100 in whole year through collective wheat selling don't make any sense. The most important problem faced by small farms is good quality inputs. However, I am against cooperative system (based on ground realities in my area) but suggested collective purchasing of inputs may bring better results to farms. Governments or microfinance banks can intervene through provision of better quality inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) 4/ From: Mayank Jain <[log in to unmask]> (India) (Moderator: this is a reply to my question: if cooperatives (formal or informal) of small farmers are to buy the high priced inputs such as pesticides, could help individual small farmers? Any examples, anyone?) Yeah, while reading about the success stories of such collaborations, I came to know about the one particular case which I think would be relevant here. Bhartiya Agro Industries FOundation (BAIF) inaugurated Agri-Business Centre (ABC) in Praksham and Guntur Districts of Andhra Pradesh (South India). Name of Farmer Producer Organisation: Shri. Laxmi Rythu Vyaparkendram While joining the ABC, there is a one-time membership fee of Rs. 600 for the farmers. Apart from that, each member has to deposit a monthly fee of Rs. 100. These contributions make up the ABC corpus, which is then used to fund its activities, such as collective procurement for inputs, collective marketing, establishing custom hiring centres, savings and internal lending, and some smallscale activities such as collection of neem seed kernels, organization of health camps, sale of mineral mixture, fodder on bunds and vermi-composting, etc. Through collective procurement, a group of selected members visit traders and purchase inputs in bulk, thus saving 10-13% per bag on transportation and ensures the timely availability of the quality inputs as well. Similarly another latest example I can see from Dumraon Farmer Producer Company in Buxar District in Bihar. Here FPO was formed as part of Bihar Agricultural Reform Initiative (DFID is one of the supporters of this program) on 31st March 2017. They are procuring inputs directly from IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative). Though margin has been less (around 2%) but still they have managed some benefits as they play in volumes. 5/ From: Dilip Kumar <[log in to unmask]> (India) Though the cooperation among small farmers at village / community level have (gone) down it is still prevalent and contributing to farming. Mutual cooperation is seen in sharing machinery ( usually held by better off farmers) such as tube well for irrigation, power tiller or tractor, thrasher, etc. They also share family labour, organic manure / compost, and even seeds and saplings. Neighbours also help in harvesting of pond. 6/ From: Ellison Musimuko <[log in to unmask]> (Zambia) In Zambia some small cooperatives mostly lack cooperative governance. Leaders tend to overstay hence members lose trust. There is also conflict between ministerial (ed: I think “governance”) roles. 7/ From: dorcas omole <[log in to unmask]> (Nigeria) My name is Dorcas and I have two years working experience as an agronomist in an international firm in Abuja (Nigeria). In Nigeria, the majority of farmers are small scale farmers and they produce on a subsistence level- only for themselves and their family members. They do not care about getting additional inputs/profit from outside sources because they only farm to survive. Hence, if there are additional sources of inputs for their farm, they tend to divert the resources to more 'promising' sources of income for themselves and their family members. There have been cases of such and one wouldn't really blame these farmers. ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the SMALL-FARMS-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/scripts/wa-fao.exe?SUBED1=SMALL-FARMS-L&A=1