CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE
LATIN AMERICA
MEDITERRANEAN BASIN
SUBSAHARIAN AFRICA
INDIAN OCEAN
CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE: Belarus, Albania
The last decade of the XXth century has been marked by the irruption of Central and Eastern Europe countries in the ambit of international solidarity and cooperation. Indeed, the collapse of planned economy systems has created, in a first step, a situation characterised by a relatively feeble economical development and a generalised disorganisation of production units and economical lines of production.
The agricultural sector, quite important in most of these countries, was particularly affected, at the level of public companies, deprived of state support, as much as at the level of private farmers, whenever they existed, who had to face a generalised shortage in their environment, depriving them both of access to the means of production and of efficient channels for the commercialisation of products.
It came to light that, in such context, FERT's experience in international cooperation and the French know-how could usefully be proposed to farmers in these countries to help them build organisations that would allow them to fill these gaps and revive their productive activity. While at the time most of those countries had actually started falling behind technically a decade before, immediate needs had more to do with reorganising a master plan allowing access to the means of production, a rational management of product flows, market organisation, new methods of administration for production units.
FERT has thus developed activities with farmers in Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Lithuania and more recently in Belarus, focused on : techno-economical counsel for farming, supplying organisation, credit, access to enhanced genetic material, production techniques.
Examples of ongoing actions
Albania: support for the development of agricultural economy in mountainous areas
Albania: Setting up of strategic plan for the sustainable development of Voskopojë town
Belarus: rehabilitation and economical development of rural zones contaminated by the Chernobyl accident
LATIN AMERICA: Brazil
In Brazil, the survival of family holdings and of regional productions is threatened by the industrialisation phenomenon which is favourable to the food industry but that has not taken into account the adaptation of the traditional agricultural sector.
With its Brazilian partners and especially with stockbreeders associations and producers organisations, FERT backs their choice of a structuring process for their business with professional organisations, perfectly adapted for the development of domestic farming. The choice of particular lines of work (dairy, potatoes, fruits and vegetables) is consistent with their economical importance in the concerned States (Minas Gerais and Parana) as much as it is with the capacity of French professional organisations in partnership with FERT to valorise a crucial methodological and technical contribution.
The impact on the institutional environment of those lines of work translates into the setting up of processes of certification and geographical indication, through the emergence of new organisational forms that allow domestic producers to get out of the “informal” system and through the passing of acts of legislation adapted to small-scale production. Quality is starting to be perceived as the result of a collective action requiring more contractual ways of coordination and with closer bonds.
The family farm and business can only benefit from these evolutions in which structuring professional organisations turns out to be indispensable. The originality here is to approach these issues through small practical projects directly led by the players of this development.
Examples of ongoing actions
Brazil: support to agricultural organisations in the quality process in the State of Minas Geraïs
Brazil: support to UNILEITE for the professionalisation of dairy family farms of south-western Parana
THE MEDITERRANEAN BASIN : Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon.
The Mediterranean basin clearly comes as a privileged place for the development of a cooperation between the farmers of the many countries of its shores.
Beyond considerations geopolitical and historical in particular, over the last 25 years the evolution of the majority of Southern Mediterranean countries, especially Maghreb, has quite naturally led to an intensification of cooperation bonds between them, especially in the agricultural field.
As a matter of fact two major elements have characterised this evolution:
on one side, those countries have been led to participate to the general movement of disengagement of authorities from functions of development administration, thus sparking off a research for relays especially through the rise and development of professional farmer organisations.
on the other side, with economic and commercial agreements between the European Union and these countries becoming more and more concrete, the latter have come to pursue a speeding-up in the growth of their agriculture’s competitiveness.
Thus those two factors have combined to foster an interprofessional North-South cooperation in the Mediterranean, further facilitated by the fact that a common agro-climatic context is, in part, shared.
FERT has been participating to this movement very actively and in continuous manner since 1984 by conducting actions both at national level, with Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco and Tunisia and at regional level, in creating and animating a Mediterranean network of applied research.
Those actions, either led directly with groups of farmers, either within the ambit of partnerships with public institutions and/or professional organisations, have essentially had the aim of accompanying the creation or the consolidation of producer organisations centred around the issues of reference creation and technical-economical counsel, organisation of crop collection, access to markets, supplying, efficiency improvement of current organisations, especially in the case of cooperatives, and bringing into technical level some of the cooperatives’ processing and packaging tools.
Several French professional organisations have been mobilised on the occasion of these actions, that have resulted in establishing relations with a focus on continuity, some of them even ending up in technical and economical partnerships.
Examples of ongoing actions
Morocco: cooperatives and valorisation of quality wheat
Mediterranean basin: animation of Mediterranean Large Scale Cultivation Network and reinforcement of capacities of base groups for the promotion of conservation agriculture
SUBSAHARIAN AFRICA: Burkina Faso, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania
Whether it is from the point of view of concerned populations or from an economical point of view, both the importance of agriculture in Subsaharian Africa and the variety of the issues at stake, linked to the rural development of this region, warrant particular attention in terms of cooperation.
In a context of economic liberalisation and of market opening, the competitiveness of exported agricultural produce must constantly improve while at the same time dire concerns of food security, linked to very strong demographic growth, must be faced.
Yet, natural conditions are often harsh, States often unable to create a favourable environment and the feebleness of the financial capital of agricultural exploitations accounts for the fact that even though they are the main players of agricultural development, rural populations are the ones enduring the worst poverty.
Operations of agricultural and rural development that had hitherto been led in Subsaharian Africa have often rested upon an essentially technical approach while agricultural activity, be it domestic ( produce to feed the family) or linked to the market, is quite clearly and before anything else the deed of entrepreneurs who bear a risk by combining means of production in view of a return.
Such considerations have led FERT, and through it the French agricultural profession, to take into account the systemic nature of agricultural activity and to ground its approach on the universal principle that farmers, by involving themselves into the functions they necessitate or by being present wherever strategic decisions concerning them are made, are able to weigh upon a favourable evolution for their environment.
This goal must necessarily go through the creation of producer organisations whose aim is to provide long-lasting quality services adapted to the needs of their members: crop collection and introduction of the products to the market, input supplying, purchase and utilisation of material, savings and credit, training, reference elaboration, technical counsel.
FERT has been monitoring professional farming organisations in Burkina Faso, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in Tanzania giving priority to a human approach over a technical approach and seeking, as fast as possible, economical viability for these organisations and the empowerment of their members to reach autonomous administration capability.
Examples of ongoing actions
Burkina Faso: reinforcement of the role of Sanmatenga producers in the niebe sector
Democratic Republic of the Congo: local development and professional training in the North of Kivu
Tanzania: USAWA, a network of credit and savings cooperative banks in Kilimanjaro region
Tanzania: rural markets, an innovating initiative to improve the marketing conditions of agricultural produces
INDIAN OCEAN : Madagascar
Even though 70% of Madagascar’s population lives from agriculture, which constitutes the first economical sector, contributing to 27% of GDP, investments in the agricultural sector apply to less than 1% of annual production value and only 3% of the farmers have access to formal financial services whereas more than a third of rural households are indebted to usurers.
The yields of agricultural productions stagnate or regress, soil erosion is faster than the settlement of new lands, livestock is narrowing, the competitiveness of major products of the agricultural economy is deteriorating and globally Madagascan farming families are poorer today than they were ten years ago.
This situation evidences the failure of past policies that have proved unable to allow the development of an agriculture both familial and competitive.
Establishing the fact that Madagascan agricultural production is and will remain the labour of small-scale, poorly equipped familial exploitations, FERT has been attending for over 20 years a number of professional farming organisations that allow farmers to break free from economical domination and from the traditional social load with the development of quality services and representation.
The fields of action of utmost importance are:
- education and advise for farmers,
- commercial organisation of producers and their lines for a better valorisation of agricultural and breeding produce, an improved commercial competitiveness and an improvement of the food security level of the country,
- information,
- land (estate) security
- financing of agriculture to favour equipment and intensification, so as to improve working conditions for the producers and to allow them to perform better,
- defence of family farming and representation of producers at the local, regional, national and international levels.
Through its long-run, continuous involvement alongside Madagascan farmers, FERT’s interventions rest on the active participation of farmers organised so they can be a part of the orientation and the administration processes of their own development.
Examples of ongoing actions
Madagascar: basic training in agriculture
Madagascar: the CEFFEL (Center for Experimentation and Education in Fruits and Vegetables) to accompany the organisation of the fruits and vegetables line
Madagascar: development of the dairy line with the support to ROVA (Union of dairy cooperatives of Vakinankaratra)
Madagascar: support to a expanding federative movement (FIFATA)
