Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets

Giel Ton

AGRINATURA – LEI Wageningen UR

ESFIM Research Coordinator

27 September 2011

PAEPARD-CSA - Brussels

ESFIM History

• Start-up of IFAP-AGRINATURA partnership: 2006 • Inception Phase: 2007 • Comparative Research (10% of budget)

– From January 2009 to December 2011 o Risk insurance, financial innovations, incentive structures in

collective marketing, market information systems

• Collaborative Research (90% of budget) – Phase I from December 2008 to July 2009

o Country workshops for country-specific research priorities

– Phase II from July 2009 to June 2012 o Most budget for workshops and local research was delayed till

October 2010

Collaborative Research in eleven countries

ESFIM Collaborative Research

• Goal: establishing a research-advocacy interface with national farmer organisations (NFOs) – Research priorities in ESFIM Country Plans

– Embedding each research in on-going advocacy efforts of NFOs

– Focusing research assignments to get useful outputs

– Backstopping local research capacity for quality

– Seeking synergy with other similar global research projects

– ‘Bridging’ and linking NFOs to new research partners in their country

Collaborative Highlights

ESFIM – the Philippines • Baseline survey to provide benchmark

information and indicators on how the system reaches poor farmers and to generate ideas for improving its empowerment capacities.

• Training tools for enhancing farmers’ and small scale rural traders’ capacities in benefiting from the ACES.

Collaborative Highlights

• ESFIM – Kenya – Input Voucher Programme

– Contract farming

– WRS

Collaborative Highlights

• ESFIM – Peru – Government procurement

• Re-open a preferential market

– Advocacy: • A pro-active market oriented

lobby agenda of CONVEAGRO

TEMAS COMUNES A LOS GREMIOS

ACTIVIDADES

Compras Estatales

Articulación de Gremios con Programas Sociales estatales. Impulso de ferias y mercados regionales agrarios.

Promoción de la Agricultura Familiar

Desarrollo Rural Seguridad y soberanía Alimentaria

Fondos y Financiamiento

Creación de fondos intangibles en Agroperú. Desembolso inmediato de créditos de Agrobanco

Competitividad e Innovación

Constitución de CITE Papa, Alpaca, Café, Arroz, entre otras.

Estándares de calidad de productos agropecuarios

Reglamento de producción y comercialización de alimentos (caso leche) INDECOPI, DIGESA

Sanidad agropecuaria Roles del SENASA.

Agricultura Orgánica Actualización Reglamento Técnico de Agricultura Orgánica Modificación de la Ley 29196 (promoción orgánica)

Collaborative Highlights

• ESFIM – Uganda • National Agricultural Advisory Services

“The NAADS That Farmers Want”

workshopsfact-

finding

policiesintitutional

arrangements

external research support

internal research staff

centralized policy

development

broad consultations

workshopsfact-

finding

policiesintitutional

arrangements

external research support

internal research staff

centralized policy

development

broad consultations

Some challenges

• Workshops versus fact-finding: the mix varies per NFO but in most countries it tends too much towards workshops mainly

– budget constraints

– legitimacy needs

• Preference for ‘internal’ staff as consultants instead of contracting established researchers

– Causing delays in reporting deadlines (many other tasks)

– ‘Loose’ interpretation of ‘strict’ Terms of Reference

– Poor quality of writing-up

Lessons learnt for PAEPARD

• Context

– Research community is more interested in methods than in the findings of research

– Farmers organisations might be interested in findings, when linked to their short-term (advocacy) interests

– Farmer organisations have problems in paying their own staff and therefore without capacity and priority to use budget for external researchers

Need for incentives to support the ‘willing’ and enlarge their room of manoeuvre: for both NFOs and researchers

Finance researchers separately (high staff rates) and communicate their available time-input (not budgets)

Competitive research grants, available for FOs only

Not a ‘right’ to be funded

Only for FOs with proven capacity to manage similar projects

Fund co-managed by NFO and ‘friends’ from research and/or donor community

Shared vision

Require submission of quality proposals

Seed money to NFO to facilitate this, incl. workshops

Transparent conditioning, e.g. including an advocacy strategy on the issue or a complete business plan

Clearly define the ToRs and expected research outputs (briefs, reports, etc.)

Define a process of peer-review

Ways out

Thanks!

www.esfim.org

donors: IFAD, AGRITERRA, Dutch Government (EL&I), CTA,

AGRINATURA

http://www.esfim.org/

Comparative Highlights • Incentive Structures

– Bolivia, Peru, Ghana, Uganda, Uruguay

Context:

• Problem that occured

• Time /place when it occured

• Involved stakeholders

Organisational-behavioural mechanisms:

• Different options to solve the problem

• Internal decision making process

• External influence

Results at the time:

• Solution or arrangement reached: what did they decide/do and

how was it expected to be effective

• What was the way to formalize and communicate it to the

membership

Evaluation afterwards:

• How did it work out in practice

• What effects did it have: organisational, economic, social

• Do they recommend the solution to other organisations, and if

not, what alternative solution would they suggest

Question 1 Question 2

INHERENT TENSIONS IN COLLECTIVE MARKETING THAT NEED ORGANISATIONAL MECHANISMS TO RESOLVE THEM

This tension is present in the activities we realize

Hardly present

Never present

We have managed to resolve it with organisational agreements / internal regulations

We are looking for ways to resolve it

We don’t need to resolve it

1- “Regulating member supply” Members sometimes protest that the organisation does not buy all their produce?

2- “Quality assurance systems” Are there members that try to deliver lower quality products than is required?

3- “Reduce the need for working capital”

Members demand cash payment instead of waiting until the organisations has sold the product?

4- “Prevention of disloyal behaviour” Are there members that sell part of their produce to other buyers though they promised to sell to the organisation?

5- “Ways to differentiate between members and non-members”

Do members accept that the organisations does not distribute all the its profits?

6- “Differ benefits and services to members and non-members”

Is there preferential treatment (e.g. price) when buying from members compared with non-members?

7- “Decide on investments and activities that do not benefit all”

Did the organisation projects or investments that are only to the benefit of a sub-group of members of the group?

8- “Delegating and supervising marketing tasks”

Do members accept that others in the organisation take decisions on prices of products sold without prior consult to the assembly?

9- “Legal responsibility in contracts and loans”

Do members take responsibility for eventual fines and sanctions related with sale contracts or loans that the board negotiates?

10- “Manage political aspirations” Do members accept that board members or team staff take party political responsibilities?

Comparative Highlights

• Risk Insurance – Linked to EU-FSTP

research programme on “Risk Management”

– Partnership with Regional Farmers Organisations in Africa

Total duration of the action

Objectives of the action

Overall objective(s): To improve household food security and livelihoods of the rural poor in Africa through better access to farm risk management tools.

Specific objective: Enhance access to and use of effective farm risk management tools by smallholder farmers and other players in agricultural value chains in Africa.

Partner(s) AGRINATURA-EEIG

International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP)

Target group(s) National farmers’ organisations: MVIWATA (Tanzania), Zambia National Farmers Union (ZNFU) of Zambia, and Conféderation Paysanne du Faso (Burkina Faso).

African Regional farmers’ organisations: Reseaux des Organisations Paysannes et Professionalles Agricoles (ROPPA), East African Farmers’ Federation (EAFF), Southern African Confederation of Agricultural Unions (SACAU), and Plateforme sous-régionale des organisations paysannes d’Afrique Centrale (PROPAC).

Final beneficiaries Smallholder farmers, larger-scale farmers, traders in agricultural inputs and outputs, banks, insurance companies.

Comparative Challenges

• Low budget for each assignment: – Difficult to structurally involve expert researchers in AGRINATURA

– Regional / local research budget not released by IFAP and not available anymore

• Insufficiently farmer-managed – Organisational problems limited effective governance by IFAP thematic policy

groups

– IFAP bankrupted in October 2009

► ESFIM Phase 3 proposal: – Link-up with thematic regional study tours and thematic conferences