23/02/2022 - Self-Employed Women’s Association, in India, hosts Nepalese producer groups for exchange of best practices in sustainable agri-business

Forest and farm producers from Nepal recently visited the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), in India, to exchange lessons learned on sustainable small-scale businesses. Through visits and workshops, participants - of which nearly 80 percent were female leaders - strengthened their capacities in value addition, branding, sales and marketing, as well as supply chain management.

Coming from different types of forest-based enterprises, the Nepalese representatives learned successful management techniques from their observation of SEWA’s social enterprises and trade facilitation unit. These included the Kamala food processing cooperative, Rudi cooperative for the handling and sale of agricultural products, and Hansiba, involved in milk processing, textile and handicraft. Participants also gained insights on the use of innovative technology and effective communication in addition to fostering networks and accessing peer mentorship programmes.

"I am especially impressed by the use of digitalization mechanisms of agro-cooperatives to sell their products and commodities and for mobile-based savings, membership management and more. The potential use in remote rural areas of these simple applications is very inspiring. We need to adopt these kinds of practices," stated Mrs Kamala Bista, one of the participants currently engaged with Soap Nut Berry production.

Mrs Dol Kumari Sapkota, essential oil enterprise representative, added that "SEWA demonstrated that even small-scale production and specific production skills can be linked to commercial marketing through collective efforts and strategic business support such as online marketing and product diversification."

 In addition to learning about mobile technologies and accessing new markets, SEWA shared sustainability strategies for small-scale enterprises with the participants. Such strategies revolved around product aggregation, processing and diversification, as well as the use of technology to connect individual producers to each other and the market.

Exchanges such as the one between SEWA and the Nepalese producer groups provide an immense learning opportunity as participants can learn first-hand from other producers in similar situations, but with different learning experiences. Producer group members are now more motivated to replicate the good practices and SEWA small-scale enterprise models in their own businesses.

The FAO Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) provides support to forest and farm producer organizations (smallholders, rural women's groups, local communities and indigenous peoples' groups) to increase their technical and business capacities to play their precious role for fighting against climate change and improving food security.