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Improving the livelihood of smallholder farmers
Empowering Rural Communities
Empowering rural communities is about building capacity at the community level through farmers' education, training, and equipping them with the skills, methods and knowledge needed to improve their lives and conditions in rural communities. It is important to mobilize people at the grassroots level to build self-reliance.
Vocational training, women empowerment, organizing self help groups and building farmer organizations are among the main approaches.
Self Help Groups (SHGs)
In India, Self Help Groups1 may be groups of 10 – 20 people who band together for financial services and sometimes social services, representing a unique approach to financial intermediation. SHGs are formed and supported usually by NGOs but sometimes by government agencies. Linked not only to banks but also to wider development programmes, SHGs are seen to confer many benefits, both economic and social. SHGs can be all-women groups, all-men groups or mixed groups. Women's groups have been performing better in key activities of the SHGs. SHGs enable women to grow their savings and to access bank credit. SHGs can also be community platforms from which women become active in village affairs, stand for local election or take action to address social or community issues.
In Africa, similar initiatives have been taken in various countries, often referred to as women's associations or women-run microcredit cooperatives.
Read more on “Self Help Groups in India”.
Farmer organizations
Farmer organizations offer people with shared interests economies-of-scale in accessing services and taking collective action aimed at improving their economic (and social ) situation. Farmer organizations can play a role in poverty alleviation by raising participation and expanding the scope of collective bargaining for the benefit of those involved.
Farmer organizations can be grouped into two types2:
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Community-based and resource-orientated organization. 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 numerous such cooperatives in the developing world, but many of them have been financially vulnerable and ineffective.
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Commodity-based and market-orientated organization. This type specializes in a single commodity and opts 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 organizations 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 have invested in the collective enterprise. It is a more challenging and demanding task to conceive, design, build, and nurture this type of organization.
In many developing countries, there is tremendous potential for expansion of commodity-based farmer organizations.
References:
1EDA and APMAS, 2006. Self-Help Groups in India: The Lights and Shades of SHGs. New Delhi: Microfinance India.
2Swanson B. E., Bentz R. P. and Sofranko A. J. (Eds.), 1997. Improving agricultural extension: A reference manual. Rome: FAO.
