EXPLORING OPPORTUNITIES FOR INVESTING IN PARTNERSHIPS WITH FARMER ORGANISATIONS: Strengthening Farmer Organisations management capacity

By George Z Goliati and Opher Mwale


According to research, most farmer organisations (FOs) in Malawi are failing to meet the expectations of their members. It shows that the FOs are challenged with management capacity and this is related to literacy levels of the rural smallholder farmers. In a bid to integrate smallholder farmers into commercial value chains, or simply "agricultural commercialisation" as well as "agricultural transformation", the government and donors have taken another step on top of farmer organisations development. In this step, the government and donors have been investing in public goods and programs that are meant to facilitate smallholder agricultural commercialisation through farmer organisations. 


Apart from trainings, working capital and other incentives, collective marketing structures have been granted to farmer organisations to facilitate and accelerate the smallholder agricultural commercialisation process. These include communal warehouses and value addition centres provided within projects that are meant to improve smallholder farmers access to markets through FOs. However, the market problems seem to persist among the beneficiaries and it is widely speculated that most of these structures are not functioning. 


This was affirmed by our virtual collective marketing platform (VCMP) experience. The smallholder farmers market problems, especially exploitations by unscrupulous traders, and existence of the warehouses prompted its development and the underutilization of the warehouses influenced its failure. The farmer organisations that were engaged did not use the warehouses as expected. Some FO leaders displayed lack of knowledge of how formal and high value markets operate. This indicated that the farmers may not know what to do with the granted opportunities or there was something else influencing their attitude towards formal markets. This was attributed to weak leaderships and coordination or weak farmer organisations management capacity in other words. 


Therefore it can be concluded that there are opportunities for agricultural commercialisation that are being underutilized by farmer organisations due to weak management capacity. This provides an opportunity for investing in strengthening of farmer organisations through partnerships. After the launching of the virtual collective marketing platform proved futile, we quickly came up with the export-oriented e-coordinated ecological anchor farms and decentralized aggregation model (the e3 anchor farms model), to strengthen farmer organisations management capacity with. The model builds on the VCMP since we still aim to support the integration of smallholder farmers into commercial value chains, therefore it is regarded as its upgraded version. 


In this model, we would operate as an aggregator who establishes anchor farms where we engage local farmer organisations and creditors to foster and support sustainable production and decentralized aggregation for identified quality-oriented markets using digital tools and communal warehouses along with diverse and low-cost ecological farming approaches. We would strengthen FO management capacity with strong digital literacy plus financial and leadership skills; identify quality-oriented markets and coordinate the required improved technologies strengthened with diverse and low-cost ecological farming approaches, sourcing out of inputs, digital extension plus monitoring and decentralized aggregation. 


We aim to make at least one FO member strongly digital literate, through whom we would affordably and easily coordinate production and marketing activities of multiple distant farmer organisations online. 

Popular posts from this blog

THE SHIRE VALLEY TRANSFORMATION PROGRAMME AND UNDERUTILISED IRRIGATION SCHEMES: MORE IMPACT OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE E3 ANCHOR FARMS MODEL

Image
By George Z Goliati Goliati  Pic: One of small-scale irrigation schemes in Malawi   The Government of Malawi (GoM) through the Ministry of Agriculture, with support from the World Bank, the African Development Bank and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), is implementing the Shire Valley Transformation Programme (SVTP). The SVTP is a 14-year program (2018-2031) which will be implemented in three sequential but partially overlapping phases. The SVTP will irrigate 43,370 hectares of land by abstracting water from the Shire River at Kapichira and conveying it by gravity to the irrigable area in Chikwawa and Nsanje districts through canals. This will ensure a more consistent supply of water to farm lands throughout the year.  Two of the five SVTP guiding principles include allowing farmers who want to participate to organise themselves and consolidate their land, and allow for private investments in partnership with land owners and users. The e3 anchor farms mod...
Read more

FARMER ORGANISATIONS DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGES AND UNDERUTILIZATION OF OPPORTUNITIES: Could strengthening of FO management capacity accelerate agricultural commercialisation in Malawi?

Image
By George Z Goliati and Opher Mwale   Even though strengthening farmer organisations management capacity provides an opportunity to exploit opportunities within agricultural commercialisation programs, experience has taught us that providing support to farmer organisations does not guarantee positive outcomes. Therefore, investing in partnerships with farmer organisations cannot guarantee a viable investment. In particular, shifting producers from relatively low value farm-gate sales to higher value markets which compensate for aggregated, quality commodity is not a straightforward process, it has been proven hard, even by well established international organisations. As such, it becomes important to consider the question that "Could strengthening of FO management capacity accelerate agricultural commercialisation in Malawi?" in relation to our newly developed e3 anchor farms model.  For instance in 2014, World Food Programme (WFP) found that Purchase for Progress...
Read more

EXPLOITING UNDERUTILIZED OPPORTUNITIES FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT WITH THE e3 ANCHOR FARMS MODEL: HOW WILL IT WORK? WILL IT SUCCEED? - Part 2

Image
By George Z Goliati  Graphic presentation of the e3 anchor farms model   Just to emphasize, AfriCan Explorations is the developer of the e3 anchor farms model, which is an agro-trading social impact business model. As a means of production or service provision of its developed models, AfriCan Explorations is designed to establish separate business enterprise. In this case, if the e3 anchor farms model proves viable, AfriCan Explorations will establish a social enterprise to be named Umodzi Farms.  Umodzi Farms will operate as an integrated agro-commodity aggregator using the e3 anchor farms model. However, the model will be developed in a manner that it attracts other agro-trading business entities to use it so as to upscale its impacts in Africa and of course improve quality of its delivery through competition. Umodzi Farms is envisioned to be a reliable supplier of export quality agro-commodities from sustainable farms and highly motivated and efficient farm...
Read more