Markets and trade
 

Professionalizing farmer organizations

Market in the Caribbean, photo: FAO/H.Bammann

The opening up of markets and the closing down of state marketing boards have meant that small farmers and other players in the agriculture value chain now have to organize and interact with one another differently. Today’s markets demand larger volumes, lower prices and higher quality produce.

Small holder farmers struggle to keep up with these changes in agricultural markets and find themselves at a disadvantage as they have high transaction costs and low bargaining power. To deal with these challenges, Farmer Organizations continuously look for new ways to organize their members so they can make more profits and savings through collective actions, such as bulk buying, collective marketing and negotiating credit and contracts.

To assist these Farmer Organizations, a cascade capacity building programme is being carried out. A first series of regional workshops for key farmer organizations covered key competencies required to be able to guide their members towards being reliable and profitable suppliers for the agribusiness sector. These first workshops also identified areas in which further training was required, which are being addressed in a second series of (sub)regional workshops

For more information on the workshops, please click on the region of interest.

Farmer organizations