Hi everyone,

Once more, here is the aggregated input on topic #1 on the cooperation among small farms, which we received since the last update on this topic.

Just as a reminder, the four questions on this topic were:
1.1.  What are different experiences of small farms’ cooperation in other regions? How has this changed over the past 10 years?
1.2.  Could you provide specific examples of the advantages and/or disadvantages of cooperation among small farms?
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?
1.4    In what way does gender influence cooperation among small farms? Please share experiences from your region.

I would like to highlight additional input requested by Mayank Jain to all participants can someone share consumer cooperative examples that has helped the cause of small farmers? - Please post your input as input to Q1.1

Here we go with 14 input contributions:

Q1.1/5 - Input on "Question 1.1: What are different experiences of small farms’ cooperation in other regions? How has this changed over the past 10 years?

1/ From: Mohamed Osman Abdulkadir <[log in to unmask]> (Somalia)

My name is Mohamed Osman Abdulkadir, I am an agriculturist, researcher and
co-founder of SOMIA-Somali Institute of Agriculture, a newly opened
academic and research institute in Mogadishu.

On the question of 1.1:

Agricultural cooperatives play an important role in enhancing food
security and creating sustainable employment for youth, women and
marginalized small-scale farmers. Small and medium scale farmers gain
tangible benefits from agricultural cooperatives that lead to food
security and poverty alleviation for hundreds of thousands of urban
population.
In Somalia, particularly the southern regions, the communal areas along
Shabelle River made their own cooperative with the aim of utilizing
the water flow of the river. There are no other collaborations like
collective purchasing power, buying farm machineries from abroad,
building local markets for their products and repairing the damaged
roads and transportations shared by these cooperatives.

In some areas, some small group of farmers sting together to support each
other for example by lending money and machinery to each other or even
land to one another.

Although In the past (prior to 1990), COOPs operated in many locations
in Somalia, including both irrigated and rainfed areas. The government
through its COOPs agency and run by hired government officers
controlled the cooperatives. All cooperatives seized functioning when
the Somalia central government collapsed in 1991. Members of COOPs
disappeared and those remaining have been engaged in private fields
since all properties of the government, including their communal
lands, were looted or usurped by gun militias.

2/ From: Adodo, Abalo <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)

My name is Adodo, working as Action-Researcher in West Africa for the 2SCALE program, which is implemented by a consortium composed by IFDC and BoP Inc.
 
I want to share with the group the experience of maize small farms in Togo.

Before the project, the small maize farmers were mainly producing for their subsistence and in small quantity for the market. Most often, they sold their maize in small quantities after harvesting when they faced a need. 
They were producing as individual farmers with very low control on access to input. The project has started as 1000s+ in 2006 and was an incubator of agribusiness initiatives in the area of intervention. It based on the use of an approach called the CASE: “Competitive Agriculture Systems and Enterprises”. 

With this approach, the interveners looked for formation of agribusiness clusters (working on collaboration between groups of farmers, input dealers, banks, traders/processors and business technical services), developing  agribusiness value chains and enabling business environment for them. Then, the project identified the production and commercialization of yellow maize to poultry farmers as business initiative. It supported some of the small maize farmers to become a cooperative and to produce for the identified market. 

Two districts of the South-Est of the country has started to work the project from 2007. This group has been extended to another 5 districts with 9 other small farmer cooperatives. The number of small maize farmers has changed from 67 in 2007 to + 2,000 in 2014. These farmers have gained enough money today from their yellow maize production to poultry farmers to take care of timely input supplying to their members and their training on good agriculture practices (GAP) with their own recruited technical staff, in addition to the public extension service officers. 

They have a very good governance structure, which is useful for them to temper at time emerging tensions.

3/ From Mayank Jain <[log in to unmask]> (India)

Actually I have couple of questions/comments on which I would like to seek fellow participant's views.
When I talk about cooperation among small farms, I also get reminded of iCOOP Korea. 

iCOOP is a network where independent organizations - consumer co-operative organizations, producer co-operative organizations, and cluster partners - cooperate to realize the common goal of realizing the needs of members. It becomes more like a consortium to me and vey interesting proposition keeping in consumers and producers interests in mind. 

I prefer demand driven approach to economic value creation even in crop planning for small farms, can someone share consumer cooperative examples that has helped the cause of small farmers.

4/ From Viviane Crosa <[log in to unmask]> (Italy/France)
I am Viviane Crosa I am a grower and president of an Associazione le Rose della Valle Scrivia of 14 agriculture farms (In Italy) . I am a "docteur des lettres"  of the Sophia Antipolis University in France 

The Antola Park started a programme to find farmers in 1995 and put them together, we were from different villages.

A famous pastry and candy shop was looking for an old traditional recipe done with old roses. 
We started to grow this flower but we had a big problem: it did not easily multiply , we waited 3 years before having a production. 
We live in the Appenini Mounts 600m high, behind the fantastic Riviera (close) by the mediterranean sea with tourism...

7 farmers had the idea to (form) an association. Quickly we became important because an institution talks to an institution: an institution does not talk to a private farmer. 
Something strange happened before in our zone: there was no agriculture after we created the association; the political institutions such as the region or the province considered our zone as an agricultural zone !

In the meantime we wrote a protocol of organic practice to grow the same roses, then a protocol (to have all of us use) the same recipe.

As the production started, we chose a day after the harvest where we could sell our crop and our rose beverage in the most important village
because of the presence of the train and the good road (infrastructure) and you (could) find a lot of people just passing by. 
We chose the name of the new market. And we invited all the growers and farmers of our zone. 

For 4 or 5 years it was difficult (for) people (to) remember the beverage, (so) would they would buy it or not?

You have to make it taste... We went from one market to the other at weekends. It took two or three times of going to the same place (to have people interested and) discover our product. 

Our beverage is (now) a very popular and traditional recipe for gottino and we brought it back.

The harvest and the transformation of the roses is concentrated in 20 days more or less. We have (to take) the time to take care of other things.

5/ From: Diana Naikoba <[log in to unmask]> (Uganda/Germany)
I am Diana Naikoba, Student of MSc Agricultural Economics at the University of Hohenheim in Stuttgart, Germany.

On the topic of “cooperation" over the past ten years in rural Uganda:

Cooperative groups existed in the coffee growing regions and they were predominantly aimed at marketing the coffee. The women cooperated too but mainly as a source of social capital, especially in rural Uganda. 
These raised funds that were used to solve emerging problems in households such as raise school fees for their children. 
Women later tended to join the booming microfinance sector in the country that provided small sized loans that were collateral free and the group members were each others' guarantors.  
Other groups existed and still exist such as Heifer international aided groups where farmers got heifers that they raised to improve own income situations. 

With the closure of most cooperatives, both genders now actively now engaged especially in the group loan schemes provided by the different institutions in Uganda. The goals of joining groups and cooperating are however diverse.

6/ From: Francisco Gurri <[log in to unmask]> (Mexico)
My name is Francisco Gurri.  Ph.D Indiana University in Anthropology.  I work as "Investigador titular C",   which is equivalent to Full Professor in the United States, at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), in Mexico. .

I work with small farmers from the Yucatan Peninsula who farm tropical forests.  Type of within and between farm cooperation will depend largely on the "purpose for farming". We have found two basic models.  Those that do agriculture as part of a subsistence strategy, and those for which agriculture is a business.  Each category will respond differently to stress and opportunities presented by the outside world.  Their households will also be organized in different ways and their demographic structures will vary.  As globalization advances household (I prefer it to small farm) cooperation change but, as long as the models persist, these changes will also differ according to the model.  What I found surprising is that inter-household cooperation is greater between households that practice agriculture as a business.  They are bound by kinship ties and establish unequal reciprocal exchanges.  For example, a son´s household may exchange labor for access to his father´s grazing land, or they may cooperate to buy a tractor or a pickup truck that will belong to the largest household.  Cooperation also extends to the market place where kin related individuals may have stores or sell the produce in the market or street.

Subsistence farmer’s cooperation is stronger within households than between households and it involves the organization and distribution of income from different sources including labor in the cities.  

Our results and views on household cooperation may be found in:
*** Gurri FD (2010) Smallholder land-use in the southern Yucatán: How culture and history matter; Regional Environmental Change; Vol. 10(3): 219- 231; DOI:10.1007/s10113-010-0114-8.
*** Gurri, F. D. and Ortega-Muñoz, A. (2015), Impact of commercial farming on household reproductive strategies in Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico. Am. J. Hum. Biol.. doi: 10.1002/ajhb.22753.

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Q1.2/4 - Input on “Question 1.2: Could you provide specific examples of the advantages and/or disadvantages of cooperation among small farms?

1/ From: ngarambe scovia <[log in to unmask]> (Rwanda) 

In Rwanda, cooperatives for small farmers have been a good solution (to determine the) market price: farmers used to sell for example bananas (cheaply) while small farmers where discouraged by the price on the local market. But now where they were able to cooperate and fix the price, more suitable for small farmers,  as (these) cooperatives for small farmers, are (collectively) a big supplier on local market.

2/ From: Adodo, Abalo <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)

Advantages:
-  They become important for input dealers who can have big quantities of order from them
-  It is easy for them to mobilize development interveners, who think on the number of actors to be strengthened in the same time, and agree to collaborate with them
-  Their number give them the capacity to succeed in negotiation with poultry farmers and traders when they have to negotiate prices. It is the same with input dealers or banks for interest of credit
-  The group is a guarantee for the bank in analyzing conditions of security of credit
 
Disadvantages:
-  It is not easy for the group to take strategic decision quickly. They have to convince each of the group leaders and sometimes, it can take long time to do it. This is not good for business.
-  Incapacity of payment from some localities can become a problem for the other members of the cooperative. It happened with banks, which refused to renew credit for the maize producers, who even reimbursed at time, when some of their pairs were unable to pay at time their credit.

3/ From: Diana Naikoba <[log in to unmask]> (Uganda/Germany)

Cooperating and working in groups would be a solution to some of the challenges faced by smallholder farmers. The groups formed can be a source of capital which comes in handy for solving challenges faced by the farming community. The group members can support one another:  Aiding one another with soft loans, can purchase inputs which they can share hence reducing production costs and can share knowledge amongst themselves thus improving their production potential.  Being in groups can be one-way of reducing production costs if farm implements and inputs are purchased and communally utilised. The farmers, if they cooperated and sold their produce to the markets directly instead of selling through middlemen who exploit them, would gain higher profit margins. It would thus reduce the transaction costs incurred by the individual farmers. 
On the other hand, smallholder farmers are very many and bringing them together to cooperate would take a lot of time. In addition, issues arise when they are meant to collect funds to solve emerging problem. The temptation to free ride in collective action is high. this discourages the enthusiastic group members.  

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Q1.3/4 - 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: Adodo, Abalo <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)

In the case of our project, we think that cooperatives are good, because this form of cooperation is good for business collaboration between people. Also, it is in accordance with the public regulation in terms of doing business, and the size of their farm has no impact on this form of cooperation.

2/ From: Shantonu Abe <[log in to unmask]> (India/Germany)

Forms of collaboration:

1. Rotating savings and credit association(Chit funds):Farmers pool their money into a common fund in order to allow people to save and have a shared source of money from which to lend out money to members.

2. A member may run away with all the money, destroying the group morale.

3. Watershed-level land management: A group of farmers pool their land, and convert the highest plot of land into a pond in order to irrigate the rest of the fields in the dry season. The land is compensated for by rotating cultivation land within the group. This requires a high level of mutual trust, and may be difficult to apply everywhere.

4. Marketing and sharing of profits:The farmers usually sell their own products themselves at the local market, but they also identify a representative from among themselves who collects all the produce and then sells the produce in the city. All profits are shared proportionally, or it is put into a shared account.

5. Seed Banks: The seed-bank ‘lends out’ seeds in exchange for the return of an equal amount of seeds from the harvest.It also acts as a repository of farmers’ knowledge on cultivation methods, uses, and other location-specific information.

6. Input production: Making vermicompost and organizing workshops for making it, making mushroom straw substrates,Slurry from biogas plants, open-pollinated seeds, sharing know-how of bio-pesticides,

7. Common Property Resource Management: Roadside, Irrigationside, canalside, and riverside tree plantations. Planting an average of 12 varieties of agro-ecologically suitable trees, the community-led management of these resources allows for a long-term investment in a shared resource that can be felled after 25 years in order to realise a return, but also provides various ecosystem services during this time.  


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Q1.4/3 - Input on “Question 1.4 In what way does gender influence cooperation among small farms? Please share experiences from your region"

1/ From: Adodo, Abalo <[log in to unmask]> <[log in to unmask]> (Togo)

We noticed also that (in our project) the group on which we had female leaders worked better than the other. There were less conflicts in this kind of 
groups.

2/ From: Diana Naikoba <[log in to unmask]> (Uganda/Germany)

In patriarchal societies the land belongs to the men hence much as the women till the land and do almost all the farm labour, they do not have rights overharvests in some cases. For people to make decisions such as joining producer groups, they need to have some level of ownership over the main resources such as land and financial capital. The lack of ownership over these resources among women hinders their ability to join such ventures. 

3/ From: Scott E. Justice <[log in to unmask]> (Nepal) 

In Nepal and  elsewhere in South Asia, it is the women who initiate and participate in the tradition of arrangements for shared labor especially in the labor bottlenecks of rice transplanting but also in harvesting of the major field crops and other activities.  




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