Chapter 21 - Establishing and strengthening farmer organizations
Shankariah Chamala and P. M. Shingi
Shankariah Chamala is an Associate Professor of agricultural extension and management in the Department of Agriculture, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Australia. P. M. Shingi is a Professor in the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.
Historical perspective
New roles for extension
Farmer organizations
Steps in establishing farmer organizations
How to strengthen existing FOs
Policy issues in establishing and strengthening farmer organizations
References
Historical perspective
Historically, extension has mainly involved technology transfer, with the village extension worker (VEW) transferring knowledge from research stations to farmers by using individual, group, and mass media methods. More recently, extension has been asked to play a "technology development role" by linking research with community group needs and helping to facilitate appropriate technology development. It is in the historical context that many government agencies developed national policies for rural development and designed a policy framework to help rural people become organized so that the delivery of services could be channelled through the various types of farmer organizations or groups. Well-meaning policies also provided blueprint structures for farmer organizations (FO) in the form of cooperatives and commodity organizations in order to provide various input, marketing, and educational services to the farmers. Targets for forming groups and farmer organizations were given to VEWs without training them properly in the theory and principles of community organization. VEWs did not have many skills and not much experience in the process of establishing these organizations. Some countries such as Thailand had VEWs for establishing cooperatives in rural areas, while other countries like Malaysia and Indonesia developed "nucleus estates" for small rubber producers where smallholders bring their rubber to process it. India has introduced dairy cooperatives with some success.
However, because VEWs in many countries lack knowledge, skill and blueprint policies, and high targets, they resorted to shortcut methods to establish farmer organizations and groups. Many VEWs presented government policies in an oversimplified way to rural communities, suggesting that unless they are organized into cooperatives or associations or groups, they will not get government subsidies or access to credit and technical services. As a result, several FOs were established overnight on paper. Many FOs remained active during the period that government subsidies were distributed, but did not actively create cooperatives or partnerships and mobilize local resources to help achieve agricultural development. Mostly the elite of rural communities captured all of the services and resources, while the poor and women were left out or received little benefit. Very few attempts were made to develop the management capacities of FO leaders, their members, and VEWs. Community organization and facilitation skills were not part of staff training programmes.
The traditional approaches to organizing farmers and forming cooperatives need to be revised to meet the following development challenges of the twenty-first century:
· The increasing absolute and relative poverty in many countries
· The degradation of natural resources such as soil, water, flora, and-fauna
· The low involvement of women in health, agriculture, and other development programmes
· The poor health and education facilities in rural areas
· The increasing sociopolitical unrest among the communities
New roles for extension
Several extension roles can be conceptualized to help rural communities get organized, but we will focus on four important roles.
Empowerment Role
The empowerment role can be a cornerstone of the new approach to extension. Extension personnel need to develop a new philosophy where their role is to help farmers and rural communities organize themselves and take charge (empowerment) of their growth and development. Telling adults what to do provokes reaction, but showing them triggers the imagination, involving them gives understanding, and empowering them leads to commitment and action (Chamala, 1990).
The term empower means to enable, to allow, or to permit and can be viewed as both self-initiated and initiated by others. For VEWs, empowering is an act of helping communities to build, develop, and increase their power through cooperation, sharing, and working together. The power in empowerment comes from releasing the latent energy hidden in the community and building collective actions for the common good, rather than from merely redistributing power from the haves to the have-nots. FOs can help harness this synergetic power for its members' survival, growth, and development. Empowered FOs can act as convergent points or platforms for solving local problems and mobilizing human and financial resources for sustainable development (also see Manalili, 1990).
Community-Organizing Role
Village extension workers must learn the principles of community-organizing and group management skills (Chamala & Mortiss, 1990) in order to help the community, especially the poor or weaker sections, to organize itself for development. Understanding the structures, by-laws, rules, and roles will help leaders to plan, implement, and monitor their programmes and to perform this new role effectively. Skills in conflict resolution, negotiation, and persuasive communication help VEWs to develop FO leaders and members.
Human Resource Development Role
The human resource development approach empowers people and gives new meaning to all other roles. Development of technical capabilities must be combined with management capability. Training modules are now available (Chamala & Mortiss, 1990; Mortiss & Chamala, 1991) to help develop individual and group management skills. The entire philosophy of human capacity building is to encourage rural communities to understand their personal and group styles of managing themselves and to improve their planning, implementation, and monitoring skills.
Problem-Solving and Education Role
Problem solving is an important role, but the role is changing from prescribing technical solutions to empowering FOs to solve their own problems. This is achieved by helping them to identify the problems and seek the right solutions by combining their indigenous knowledge with improved knowledge and by using their resources properly. Similarly, there is a shift in the education role from lectures, seminars, and training to learning by doing and encouraging farmers and FOs to conduct experiments and undertake action-learning projects.
Farmer organizations
Types of Organizations
Farmer organizations can be grouped into two types: one is the community-based and resource-orientated organization; the other is the commodity-based and market-orientated organization.
Community-Based, Resource-Orientated Farmer Organizations. This type could be a village-level cooperative or association dealing with inputs needed by the members, the resource owners, to enhance the productivity of their businesses based on land, water, or animals. These organizations are generally small, have well-defined geographical areas, and are predominantly concerned about inputs. However, the client group is highly diversified in terms of crops and commodities.
There are many primary-level agricultural cooperatives in the developing world, but the majority of them have been financially vulnerable and ineffective. Strategies have been developed to strengthen these organizations (see the section on how to strengthen existing farmer organizations). This group of organizations can generate income from the sale of inputs and outputs. The income can then be put back into the organization by spending it on extension, data generation, business planning, and administration. It is essential to have professional and honest management with constant monitoring and periodic rounds of evaluation (Gupta, 1989). Commodity-Based, Market-Orientated Farmer Organizations. These organizations specialize in a single commodity and opt for value-added products which have expanded markets. They are designated as output-dominated organizations. Not specific to any single community, they can obtain members from among the regional growers of that commodity who are interested in investing some share capital to acquire the most recent processing technology and professional manpower. These FOs are generally not small and have to operate in a competitive environment. Research, input supply, extension, credit, collection of produce, processing, and marketing are all integrated to maximize the returns on the investments of the members who invested in the collective enterprise. Several successful cases are found in India, such as Anand Milk and other dairy FOs.
The rate of success of these organizations is determined by their capacity to arrange for major investments and a continuous flow of raw materials. This requires the competent and convincing management of both enterprise-related and member-related aspects. The profits generated are used to provide supplementary and supportive services at reduced cost to encourage members to use them. To do this requires a high calibre of representative and enlightened leadership from among the grower members. It is a challenging and demanding task to conceive, design, build, and nurture this type of FO.
VEWs can consult and work with other governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations. However, each farmer organization will need to define its own BASE (basic activity sustaining the enterprise). In India, or for that matter in many developing countries, there is tremendous potential for expansion of commodity-based FOs. One rule of thumb suggests that any commodity which accounts fo