Save the date: 16 October is the World Food Day

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This year the theme of the World Food Day is "Agricultural cooperatives: key to feeding the world". Cooperatives are present in all sectors of the economy, including agriculture, irrigation, and watershed management. FAO reports that cooperatives across all sectors provide over 100 million jobs around the world, 20 percent more than multinational enterprises! Cooperatives are also effective ways for poor communities to get organized, efficiently manage natural resources, increase food production, and strengthen members' capacities and skills.

Could you tell us some success stories regarding the action of cooperatives and water users associations in the developed and developing world? Do you think that cooperatives are really the key to feeding the world?

Check also this interesting slideshow: http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/photos/2012/wfdphotogallery/

3 Answers

  2. Great success story, thanks for sharing it! In which country was the project implemented, exactly? I have been working in Zambia and also there I came across several cooperatives whose work is just extraordinary. In particular, I was impressed by some women cooperatives. They started as a simple system for poor rural women to get organized and help each other providing enough food for their families. Then the cooperative diversified the activities, including collection of wild fruits, cropping of high value crops, food processing (marmalade, sauce, etc.), and even packaging and marketing. These cooperative did an excellent work when it came to financial sustainability: the members paid a membership fee and part of the profit was retained and re-invested in the business. You can also read here http://bit.ly/JNK8bA a similar example from Zambia. Of course, some cooperatives are not so successful. I was accompanied by an officer of the Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries to some fishing camps and I spoke with members of a few ex-cooperatives. Most of the times, the cooperative failed because of lack of commitment and compliance to the rules by some members or because of lack of re-investment of the cooperative profits into new operations and maintenance of the existing structures. I am still wondering how could these fishing cooperative work better? which are the factors of success? which are the bottlenecks and the dangers that could make a cooperative unsustainable?

  3. Claudia, yes I do!The agricultural cooperatives are the key to feeding the world!I am going to share with you my experience in one of the developing countries where I was working. Based on the country policies and programme in order to fight against hunger and poverty, different development projects were established and implemented.One of the non govenmental organisation called German Agro action was active in agriculture to help the population in the area to develop the swamps and introduce the rice production. The project started in 2005, active in developing the marchlands (by building the dykes, intakes, canal and some other irrigation infrastructures, protecting them against erosion by building the land terracing on the adjacent hills and rehabilitating the roads and bridge in the area to extend the market for the new production.The project did help the population to create their associations and later on the cooperative.The cooperative was created in order to be effective and efficient within the management of the developed swamps. Several trainings were given to the cooperative members in order to build their capacities in different areas such as: How to create the small projects in order to work with the microfinance and generate the income, how to apply the fertilizers in their plots, how to do the maintenance. They could make the study trip to share their experience and knowledge with some other cooperatives in the country. Looking at the socio-economic study carried out before the implementation of this project, you could see a big difference between the life style of the population in the area and their surroundings.Because the food production was increased and the cooperatives did not contribute only on the food secutiry but also in the reduction of poverty by creating jobs, fighting with the malnutrition diseases. The members were happy to afford the school fees for the children and pay their health insurances.