Co ops etc, hijacked by people in power, forced members to suffer losses made by them - Government of India intervened and legislated in the Indian Cos' Act, through Amendment IX A, in Dec 2002, putting in place the Producer Company (PC) - the rest is now history!
Name of your organization, country
Devarao Shivaram Trust, India
Your role
Trustee
What type of FSN information do you currently use for decision making?
Outputs posted
How do you give feedback to information producers and advise them of your information needs?
Keeping focus on the fact that ‘Public funds are for Public Good’ and for meeting the needs of the poor and for their long term sustainability
Do intermediaries (media, individuals, etc.) play an important role in delivering useful FSN information to you?
E consultation contributions
In your own words , tell your success story or describe challenges you face!
I asked myself the Q; How can I give back my 50 years experience and having made it as a successful entrepreneur!
Looking out of the aircraft window and seeing farming communities, mostly resource poor, illiterate, isolated, not even having access to a road, fending for themselves. I came to the conclusion that these out of sight out of mind entrepreneurs needed support, assistance and direction as they were not on the Government/ NARES’ rudder, if they are to come out of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, deep debt and for us to manage the effects of climate change.
Having access to FAO, IFAD, WFP, whilst in Rome, I pursued the concept of farmers setting up their orgs, but soon realized that the money bags, large farmers/ corporations took control of the management and at the cost of the illiterate resource poor smallholder members, as they continued to be poor, malnourished and in debt. Having had a similar experience as a member of a Club during the 1980's, where elected members also managed by farming out portfolios among themselves and bleeding the institution. Some of us members intervened, when we received the annual accounts showing a loss. Some of got together and cleaned out those committee members whose families had become permanent fixtures, replacing them with members having integrity and ensurring professionals were hired to manage This experience encouraged me to extend this intervention to the rural poor communities following low cost agro eco systems of their area.
In 1999 I discussed this intervention with and persuaded friends in FAO to consider a pilot project for implementation in the South Asia region, funded by IFAD. Thus a beginning had been made to facilitate rural producers to set up their producer org/ company (PC), assisted by the NGO/ CSO working with them, also to hire professionals (general practitioners [GPs]/ MBAs in agriculture) to take over all risks and responsibilities, other than on farm activities, to manage the ’Cash to Cash Cycle’ of each of its members, a successful model being: www.navajyoti.org.
A similar situation was being faced by the milk co operatives in Gujrat, India, around the same time and they had persuaded the Government of India to get Parliament to pass a bill for democratisation of the co ops, resulting amendment IX A of the Indian Co’s Act - setting up of Producer Company.
Ministry of Agriculture has now issued guidelines for a National programme to fund and support producers for setting up PCs, as all future funding and support from Government will be delivered through the PC (not possible for them to deal with millions of producers).
Prof Dr Amar KJR Nayak's paper of March 2014 in support is attached.
What recommendations would you give to producers of FSN information wishing to improve the uptake and relevance of their information for decision making?
FSN has focussed on meeting smallholder producer communities' needs, must ensure that that all e consultation facilitators focus on this and not leave grey areas in their outputs, being then filled by the business usual agenda of the system pushing for their mandates and TORs, promoting high cost conventional agri systems, the cause of the deep distress among 80% of the rural poor smallholder producer communities, if we are serious about achieving the goals set by the UN from time to time.
Any other comments?
Change in Mandates of Government NARES, Global Institutions and their TORs, is urgently required to reverse the top down being o a bottom up approach, converting the high cost conventional back to the roots/ low cost smallholder friendly agro ecological systems of each area.
Г-н Subhash Mehta