Suiting the action to the word
Activity report 2008

• Prologue
• Introduction
• I Farmers Fighting Poverty: Funding & Expenditure
• II Projects: the building blocks
• III Advisory services
• IV Achievements
  • Introduction
  • Outcome: Strengthening farmers’ organisations
  • Impact
  • IFDC: From 1000s to millions
  • IFAP
• V Agriterra in 2008
• VI Conclusions and recommendations
• Supplement
• Annexes
• Download Activity Report 2008

IV Achievements

Introduction

The results of each project and mission has been determined and this is documented on www.agro-info.net, for all to see. In the previous chapters we drew some overarching conclusions, for instance that we met the main targets of virtually all work areas, that our expenditure is distributed following the envisaged division: almost 60% in Africa and 40% on women and that contributions of agri-agencies increased considerably. We laid the bricks (projects) and started constructing a solid foundation using cement (advisory services). So, the foundation of what we want to achieve is laid.

Now we want to see, what has happened beyond the figures on expenditure and numbers of projects and missions. What has actually been the impact of our efforts? Were organisations actually strengthened? Did people’s standard of living really improve?

In this chapter we collected the evidence on our outcome and impact in 2008 to answer these questions. To measure outcome we use the profiling, our tool to measure the strength of organisations. To measure impact we use the figures on outreach and activities per intervention level, stories collected and evaluations of four projects.

This chapter also presents the results we obtained together with two important institutions with which we closely collaborate, IFDC and IFAP. Both of them contribute considerably to our overall results.

Outcome: Strengthening farmers’ organisations

Strengthened farmers’ organisations are at the core of our work. The agri-agencies want to build strong representative and democratic membership based farmers’ organisations. We are convinced that these have a positive impact on development, democratisation and income distribution. To measure the development of farmers’ organisations, Agriterra uses the profiling tool. It is used to assess the strength of an organisation at a certain point in time, by measuring those aspects that are critical for a well-functioning farmers’ organisation. Repeated measurements in subsequent years provide information about the organisation’s development on these aspects. More information about Agriterra’s approach and the critical aspects mentioned, can be found in Annex 9.

2008 was the first year in which we used our revised profiling tool. The main alteration was that a profiling can now been done from behind the desk. We use our in-house knowledge and ask our partner organisations for factual information. The aim of this alteration is to minimise the required effort from the partner organisation.

Considering the high number of client organisations, it is not possible to profile all of them. Therefore selection criteria were set up to define the organisations for which the profiling cycle will be started. The main criterion is an (expected) structural cooperation. Profiling series that already started during past years, were continued. Two other agri-agencies, AFDI and TRIAS, started implementing the new profiling tool as well.

Agriterra profiled 69 producer organisations during 2008. Twenty-nine from Africa, twenty-one from Latin America, sixteen from Asia and three from Eastern Europe. A list of the organisations that were profiled in 2008 can be found in Annex 10. The profiles describe the situation of the partner organisations at the end of 2007. The revised exercise allows us to do a yearly measurement and we are currently starting up the data collection for the 2008 profiling exercise. The results will also become publicly available on Agro-Info.net (Organisations module).

The results will be illustrated with examples of two producer organisations, the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (KENFAP) in Kenya and Coocenki in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

KENFAP, Kenya

KENFAP is a nationally operating farmers’ organisation. The main focus of KENFAP is lobby and advocacy. To be successful in its lobby activities KENFAP will need to relate to other actors (government, agribusiness, research institutes). In the spider diagram you can see that KENFAP is strong on the indicator ‘representation’ which reflects these qualities. Another key issue in lobby is that KENFAP is representing a considerable number of their target group. In 2007, KENFAP had over 550.000 members. Related to the potential number of members, 3.000.000, one can say KENFAP has a substantial rate of organisation (representativity), i.e. 19%. KENFAP is also strong on Professional Capacity and Accountability.

COOCENKI, Congo D.R.

Coocenki is a locally operating cooperative society in Kivu Province in the East of Congo. Coocenki has 1160 members. Its main activity is delivering economic services. In the spider diagram you can see that Coocenki has a high Professional Capacity indicator, indicating they are able to provide the services. The Strategic Potential indicator shows they were fairly able to do so. That Coocenki was able to generate income by its economic services, is shown by its income diversification score. They were able to generate two thirds of their income from economic activities, resulting in a strong income diversification (66%). One can also see that there is room for improvement regarding gender.

The subsequent measurements will allow us to see how the organisations develop over the years on the critical aspects. Due to the revision of the method the results of the profilings on 2007 cannot be compared with previous profiles for six leading indicators, because their computation has changed to some extent. The other two indicators, on the contrary, remain unchanged: i.e. rate of organisation (= representativity) and income diversification. For these indicators, it is valid to compare with previous years. We will make a comparison between the profilings done in 2005 or 2006 and the last results on 2007. We have the final results for 58 organisations, of which 43 we also profiled in 2005-2006.

The two indicators, rate of organisation and income diversification, gain in importance when we remember that, according to Crowley et al., in Membership-based Organisations of the poor , such organisations can be considered successful when they fulfil the following conditions:

1. They achieve the objectives agreed upon by the members
2. They retain or expand their membership
3. They show progress towards financial and managerial self-reliance
4. They bring improvement to the self-esteem, economic and social well-being of its members

Point 2 can be said to be measured by Agriterra’s rate of organisation (representativity). Point 3 is measured by the income diversification indicator. In the table below we show a summary of the changes in income diversification.

The income diversification indicator takes into account both the diversity of income sources as such, and the proportion of income from own sources (e.g. member fees). The average of the indicator in 2007 was 32%. In 2005/2006 it was 29%, meaning a relative increase of 12,5 %. Organisations at all continents demonstrate a relative increase on this indicator. This increase exceeds the Farmers Fighting Poverty goal of 7% (for the four-year period). If we take a closer look at the results, we see that 23 organisations improved their score on income diversification, while eighteen organisations scored lower than before. See annex 10 for details.

The rate of organisation or representativity reflects the relationship between the number of individual members and the potential target group. The target group is meant in the broad sense, for instance in the case of a national operating dairy cooperative we relate the number of members to all dairy farmers in a country. Depending on the situation the rate of organisation can have very extreme values. Because of this, we measure the change of this indicator in a different manner than in the case of income diversification. We look at the relative improvement of the rate of organisation per organisation and take the average of these relative improvements. E.g. if an organisation increases its rate of organisation from 5% to 6% (+20%) and another from 80% to 88% (+10%) the average percentage improvement is 15%.

The definition of the target group has become stricter. As a result a lot of organisations have a target group different from the one used in the older version of the profiling exercise, so the numbers could only be compared for twenty organisations. The average change for those twenty organisations was 1,8%. This is just below the Farmers Fighting Poverty goal of 2,2% increase (for the four-year period). A better picture will be established in 2009, when we will be able to compare the new data of all profiled organisations.

Rate of organisation is, of course, all about membership. Absolute figures therefore sometimes are more meaningful than the relative ones. The table below is based on Annex 10 and includes 39 out of 43 organisations with two measurements.

The improvement in the rate of organisation is confirmed by the absolute growth: the total membership increased from 2,1 million to 2,3 million, an improvement of 11,4%. The strong diminution in membership of Imbaraga (Rwanda) (see Annex 10) explains why Africa is the only continent not showing an increase in membership. We can conclude that our client organisations have succeeded in attracting a greater number of farmers.

Apart from measuring the strengthening of the organisations, the profiling tool serves another important goal: providing information as basis for an informed dialogue between all parties concerned on the way forward and the orientations in the cooperation. The results of the profiling exercise have been communicated to our partner organisations and are used as input for defining the strategic orientations in the collaboration agreements.

Regarding the measurement of the strengthening of producer organisations two other important activities will take place in 2009. First, a CIDIN post-graduate researcher will assess how to make optimal use of our profiling tool regarding cooperative societies. And secondly, as part of an extensive evaluation of Dutch support to capacity development by the Policy and Operations Evaluation Department (IOB) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Agriterra has set up an external evaluation. In this evaluation the profiling results gathered over the years are an important source of information. The progress of this evaluation can be followed on agro-info.net (project 09at-5365).

Impact

As we explained in the first activity report, we use several criteria to measure the impact of our work, i.e. the visible change (improvement) in people’s livelihoods. Direct participation in projects is an indication that the participants actually benefit and see a direct change in their surroundings. That is why we monitor direct participation (outreach) per intervention level. To be as truthful as possible about the number of people reached, we only count those who actually receive funds or support through a project. Stories, or testimonies, from the field are another way to collect evidence of the impact of our work. And we also conduct in depth evaluations of projects.

Outreach and intervention levels

The first question we want to ask is: how many people participated in the projects, and thus were reached? If, at the end of the programme we can say that the 2.7 million people that we aspired for, actually participated in the projects that is an important achievement: 2.7 million people, not as beneficiaries but as actors!

Comparing the original planning on outreach (column plan FFP) with the realisation for 2008, the table below shows that realised outreach was much higher than foreseen. In that sense our efforts have paid off and we made up for the unsatisfying performance in 2007. In 2007 the outreach amounted only to 510.000 instead of the planned 627.000. With almost 1.5 million participants in 2008, we are well on our way to reach the 2.7 million actors we said we would. And in 2008, 41% of the outreach concerned women, i.e. 602.145 persons, which is again far above target. See the table below for details.

The distribution of the outreach over the work areas is not as straightforward positive. Still, almost 50% of the outreach has been realised in the two ‘traditional’ work areas (3 and 4, respectively organisational strengthening and institutional development). Probably, this still reflects the fact that projects are not always assigned to a work area that reflects the main activities as specific as possible, and therefore end up in the more general work areas. More positive is the fact that a high outreach was realised in work area 5 (grass-roots participation), which is all about reaching people at the local level. Precisely as we said we wanted to do – and evidently did. The micro-projects in Kenya and Indonesia (chapter II) are another case in point.

Chart 4: Number of participants

Source: http://www.agro-info.net/

Expenditure per participant

And how about the average expenditure per participant? This is an indication of actual direct benefits of participants per level. In 2008, outreach and expenditures per level were as follows:

At grass-roots level, expenditures per participant are 13% higher than expected. This is strange in view of the higher number of participants at this level, compared to what we planned for. Yet, this increased participation was triggered by a growing proportion of project funds that went to the grass-roots level. Therefore, participants at local level profited more from the activities than we expected. More than 35% of those expenditures were at that local level, i.e. in the villages and districts. This is practically equal to the programme’s target for 2008, which was 37% of expenditures at this level. We recall here, that this increased percentage of project expenditures at grass-roots level is an expression of our ambition to increase our contribution to DGIS’ intervention strategy of direct poverty reduction. We want it to reach 62% in 2010.

If we look at all project expenditures, we then see that the distribution over the three intervention strategies, is as follows:

One of the reasons that the contracting of projects still does not reflect the increased distribution at local level, is that contracts for the micro-projects are made at (sub)national level. When we purely look at the levels where the projects are contracted a very different picture appears: only 13% of the contracts are made with organisations at the local level; and 61% is still made with clients on the provincial of national level and the rest even on higher levels.

The comparison between the actual spending and the level of contracting makes clear that on one hand, the producer organisations are doing their job well: 33% of all Farmers Fighting Poverty money is going to local levels, even though more than 60% of that money is contracted at the provincial or national level. So that implies that not all money is used just for the benefit of national offices etc.

On the other hand, there is still a lot of work to do in order to increase the 13% contracts with local level clients to 80% in 2010. Through our micro-projects we have found a way to stimulate this, but it is not enough. We are formulating plans to follow up on our genuine ambition to empower local and district levels.

Stories

Another way to explore the impact of Agriterra’s work is through harvesting stories. In order to find out if the situation of (female) farmers in developing countries has changed, since they became members of a farmers’ organisation or since the start of a project that was carried out by their organisation, we collect stories. Through story harvesting the agri-agencies want to gather information about the situation before the project, what happened during the project, what were the most significant changes that occurred as a result of the project and the contribution of the organisation and project to these changes. The process consists of two steps: the first step consists of collecting the story by posing relevant questions to the participants/farmers during an open, informal conversation, where it is important not to ask leading questions. The second step is the systematisation and analysis of key elements in the actual stories. In 2007 Agriterra developed a way to systematically collect stories. In the experimental phase only liaison officers harvested stories. In the course of 2008, we formalised the concept and added the guidelines for story harvesting to the ‘report guidelines for a mission report’. Since then, everyone mission participant is expected to harvest stories.

The target for 2008 was to collect 50 stories. The table in Annex 11 (Overview of stories) shows that we have reached that target, and more than that: 82 stories. Granted, not all of the harvested stories are really suitable to use in reports on impact, but they are starting to paint the picture of our impact. Still, 59 stories are suitable, so we have made a big step forward from 2007.

A more systematic approach to the collection and analysis of stories will be adopted as a result of the joint analysis and interpretation of the received stories by the AgriCord member of the M&E team. The results of his work can be consulted separately. In the awareness that every story is unique, this report cautiously tries to draw conclusions about impact on the basis of a number of projects (representing over 100.000 farmers) that started before Farmers Fighting Poverty. One of the conclusions is that income seems to be increased, although this (of course) cannot be exclusively attributed to the support provided to the producer organisations by agri-agencies. Another conclusion was that “impact was very positive in terms of social confidence, creative attitude and participation in community dynamics, especially for women. This helps to decrease their vulnerability.” The recommendation of the report to recognise these successes in the future strategies of the producer organisations and AgriCord and to consider these aspects more systematically in future assessments has taken shape in our aim to measure representativity and the intent to systematise the analysis of key elements in stories collected in 2009.

In case of Agriterra, all stories supplied are registered by the communications department. They link the stories to work areas on http://www.agro-info.net/. The stories can be found by going to ‘Programmes’-> ‘Farmers Fighting Poverty’, selecting the programme/work area of your choice and checking the News items belonging to that specific programme (at the bottom of the page). Some of the most significant stories are reproduced throughout this report.

Evaluations

As stated in the Activity Report 2007, generating aggregate figures on project performance would be one of the challenges for the report of 2008. While this still proves difficult, we tried to address this challenge by including project evaluations within our M&E system as an additional method of measuring impact. Moreover, these project evaluations will provide us with more in-depth information about the performance of Agriterra’s support to rural member organisations.

Each year, four projects are selected based on criteria such as geographical positioning (two projects in Africa, one in Latin America, one in Asia/Eastern Europe), different work areas, direct focus on impact and the mix of successful and less successful projects. All project evaluations are carried out by two external evaluators using the five evaluation criteria of the OECD: Relevance, Efficiency, Effectiveness, Impact and Sustainability.

In 2008 four evaluations on projects from 2007 were planned, of which one in the end had to be cancelled due to continued political unrest (PASAKA on Mindanao, Philippines). Thus, three evaluations have been conducted, namely of projects of the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (KENFAP), the Fédération des Unions de Producteurs du Bénin (FUPRO) and the Junta Nacional de Café (JNC) in Peru.

The core business of KENFAP is lobbying directed at the Kenyan government. The evaluation report shows that KENFAP is strong in doing so. Suggestions for policy changes are frequently adapted, such as changes in potato regulations or a significant increase in the agricultural budget. However, the members of KENFAP are less interested in lobbying and give priority to economic activities. This might have to do with minimal reporting of KENFAP to the members on the achieved successes.

Unfortunately, due to methodological constraints the evaluation of JNC did not focus on the impact level. However, the evaluators of JNC were able to conclude that JNC developed into a representative farmers’ organisation on national level with strong relations with the Peruvian government. The evaluators recommended JNC to develop strategies for decentralisation in order to improve the service delivery for the small coffee producers.

The evaluation of FUPRO showed that FUPRO does have impact at local level, because farmers have substantial higher yields than before its intervention. At national level some improvement is possible through better governance and ensuring financial sustainability. The evaluation gave useful inside information about the organisation on the basis of which future support can be better directed. Both evaluations of KENFAP and FUPRO emphasise the need for assistance in monitoring and evaluation.

The micro-projects of KENFAP and the Horticultural Partnership Support Program (HPSP) in Indonesia, which were already presented in Chapter II, were also evaluated. The micro-projects in Kenya and Indonesia are still in a too early stage of execution to give definite evidence of their impact. Yet, already there are signs of impact, such as the projects on honey producing in the Rift valley (Kenya) which already resulted in an increased income for the farmers. Or the Mangosteen partnership (HPSP, see text box p.19), that resulted in more bargaining power for small producers.

Although 2008 was the first year these project evaluations were carried out, all evaluations have resulted in interesting and useful information to improve Agriterra’s service delivery to farmer organisations. Moreover, lessons can be learned for further development of the project evaluation procedure and content, and thus, improvement of Agriterra’s M&E policy.

For further reference, below we list the evaluations on which we based this section (further details on http://www.agro-info.net/ ):

• Evaluation of the KENFAP project “Transition Plan”, E. Lassche and B. Hesterman
• Evaluación de Proyecto JNC/Agriterra, J.G. Vidal Acuña and P. Rombouts
• Rapport de la mission d’évaluation externe de la FUPRO, A. Tahirou and J.R. Ndjadi
• The HPSP Programme Evaluation, P. Lyssens and P. Iskandar
• KENFAP micro-projects: Evaluation of institutional set-up and project implementation, H. de Vries and J. Levelink

IFDC: From 1000s to millions

One programme deals very specifically with impact. The “From Thousands to Millions” (1000+) programme tries to reach over 1.000.000 farm households and aims to accomplish real results at impact (=poverty reduction) level. Therefore, we highlight the results of this programme here. Agriterra collaborates with IFDC in the programme. Under the coordination and leadership of seven national farmers’ organisations in West Africa and their umbrella organisation ROPPA (Réseau des organisations paysannes et des producteurs agricoles de l'Afrique de l'Ouest), this programme promotes the widespread introduction of competitive agricultural systems and enterprises (CASE). It does so by stimulating linkages between value chain actors and surrounding support services, such as credit institutions, training and extension services, agricultural research, etc.

The striking features of this project are the ambitious quantitative goals set for the programme and the elaborate system to do the (impact) measurement. In 2007 these quantitative goals were targets in Work Area 9 “Inputs for agriculture”, but in the revision of the targets they were set apart due to their specific character.

The 1000+ programme has the following objectives:

• Effect an average 50% increase of agricultural productivity, as well as a 30% increase of the average income of 1 million farmers' families.
• Achieve a measurable improvement of sustainable production (with regard to environmental techniques) on an additional 2 million hectares of land within farms.
• Improve food security through an increase of the accumulated agricultural production at the size of 500,000 tons grain equivalent.
• Increase the capacity of research institutions, producer organisations, trade associations and entrepreneurs (other than farmers) so that they can continue and repeat the programme activities independently.

Based on the elaborate M&E system managed by IFDC, we can summarise the results as follows. The main beneficiaries of the 1000s+ programmes are farmers' families at local level. Until the end of 2008, 312.000 households were reached with the programme. This is an impressive number, but compared to the planned number of 450.000 households, it still falls short.

In 2008, the productivity of the targeted crops increased with 53 % as a result of the production techniques developed around the commodities. The average farm income increase was 94%, essentially the result of the increase in prices recorded in 2008. Therefore, the expected threshold in changes in productivity and income at the end of the project has already been reached. An additional 60.000 ha is being cultivated with Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) techniques against 300.000 ha foreseen in the project document, giving a rate of achievement of 20%. On the other hand, there was a significant increase in aggregate production of 350.000 tons of cereal equivalent, which approaches the total programme target of 500.000.

The low rates of achievement on the first two targets (families and area) can be imputed to the (grass-roots) producer organisations who neglected to collect relevant data from their members and the non-members who are benefitting from the project activities. In-depth capacity building and human resources for data collection and analysis is required.

We can conclude that the 1000s+ project is well on its way, although more timely delivery of monitoring data remains a challenge. This will be one of the points on the agenda of a workshop to be held in Kano (Nigeria) in July of 2009 with all relevant stakeholders, including Agriterra.

IFAP

Introduction

The International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) is the representative entity for farmers’ organisations at world level that is closely interrelated with the work of the AgriCord and the agri-agencies, and vice versa. AgriCord takes the input of IFAP to guide its development cooperation policies. This is most obvious considering that Farmers Fighting Poverty was based on the recommendations of IFAP to combat poverty and hunger. In a similar vein, AgriCord considers it of utmost importance to strengthen IFAP in its role as platform of exchange between farmers’ organisations in developed and developing countries, as well as worldwide advocator of farmers’ interests. Related to the latter point, AgriCord focuses on the improvement of the policy contributions from the new members from developing countries and their influence on the general policy positions of IFAP. AgriCord also urges farm leaders of these new members to become office holders in the numerous commissions of IFAP.

In this chapter we look into IFAP from two angles: First, what has Farmers Fighting Poverty contributed in relation to the recommendations set by IFAP? And secondly, what has IFAP contributed to the targets of Farmers Fighting Poverty?

Farmers Fighting Poverty in support of IFAP recommendations

The table below shows the distribution of actual Farmers Fighting Poverty expenditures over the fifteen recommendations made by the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) to eliminate rural poverty and achieving food security (Paris, November 2004).

What is most evident is the huge proportion of funds going to recommendation # 3 Enhance capacity of farmers' organisations: 39,9% which roughly reflects the equally high (and higher than expected) proportion going to work areas 3 and 4 for organisational strengthening and institutional development. Capacity building being the main objective of both Agriterra and IFAP, it is clear that a lot of effort is put into this priority area.

The increase of market power for farmers (10), re-centre resources to agriculture (1), involvement of farmers in decision making (4) and the focus efforts on people and their organisations (2), also score relatively high. These recommendations are related to work areas 1: Participatory policy formulation, 5: Grassroots participation, 10: Agricultural extension, and also abovementioned work areas 3 and 4. All these work areas score high as well. See also chapter II.

Support to organisations

As indicated in Chapter 2, the projects in 2008 were executed by 145 organisations. As shown in the table below, 29 of these organisations are members of IFAP, half of which are African organisations.

The IFAP projects

IFAP implements two projects with direct support from Farmers Fighting Poverty. The so-called ESFIM project (see special services report at the start of this chapter) and the International Farmer dialogue.

The total budget allocation for the International Farmer Dialogue is € 5.7 million. From this amount, € 3.6 million was to be provided from the budget allocated by the Dutch government to Farmers Fighting Poverty. The rest is contributed by IFAP. The total expenditure in 2007-2008 (the two first years of the programme) has been more than € 5,5 million (to which the Dutch government contributed almost 3,4 million). This is money intended for development, which means that it can only be justified by the contribution, direct or indirect, it makes to poverty eradication. This is not immediately obvious, because 40% is spent on salaries of experts dedicated to international policy matters. Yet, IFAP’s role is to complement any effort in concrete development cooperation. It influences the policies of intergovernmental organisations and even individual governments in both developed and developing countries, which in the end can prove to be far more important than any development project.

Overall impact

2008 was a watershed year for the ‘International Farmer Dialogue-project with the introduction of the regional coordination system, expert policy working groups, new communications vehicles to diffuse IFAP policy messages and raise awareness on global issues. The project made it possible that an increasing number of farmer leaders from developing countries could be included in IFAP policy processes and in IFAP delegations for lobbying on specific subjects. Also, the international agricultural agenda is more and more ‘development focused’ which lends itself to an increase in opportunities for developing country participation.

A particularly good result was the organisation of four regional workshops with the World Bank on the World Development Report 2008. This was followed by participation of the Bank in the IFAP Congress and later a high-level visit from IFAP to their Washington D.C. headquarters took place. As a result, the Bank is engaging with IFAP in consultation processes on its projects and policy work with farmers’ organisations at the national, regional and international level.

Progress made for women farmers in IFAP

Women farmer participation in the IFAP Congress in 2008 was 63 % above the level of the 2006 Congress. This participation is fairly evenly balanced between industrialised country women and women from developing countries. However, women still only make up 20 % of the delegate body, where a target of 30 % is to be reached.

Participation rates are higher in IFAP delegations at non-Congress events, averaging 38 percent in 2008. Geographically, the highest level of women’s participation was observed from Latin America and the lowest from Africa.

The results of the gender workshops are in line with the AgriCord-IFAP concept note on a policy for AgriCord for development work on gender issues. The Chair of IFAP Committee on Women in Agriculture passed this concept note to the Executive Committee at its last session, and now there is a consultation with members on adopting it as IFAP policy as well.

Progress made in IFAP developing country membership

The increase in developing country membership of IFAP in 2008 was exceptional. Nineteen new farmers’ organisations from developing countries joined IFAP in 2008, compared with six in 2007 and seven in 2006. This is in large part the result of the number and quality of missions conducted by the regional coordinators. Membership growth is fairly balanced over the different regions, but is slightly higher in Africa and slightly lower in the Mediterranean.
And of course we cannot leave unmentioned the historic fact that, for the first time in IFAP’s 60-year history, the federation has a president from a developing country. Mr. Ajay Vashee from Zambia was elected president in May of 2008 during the World Farmers’ Congress in Warsaw.

Progress made for developing country farmers in participatory decision-making within IFAP

The level of participation of developing countries in IFAP policy working groups exceeds targets in 2008. There were on average five participants from developing countries in each of the working groups, so making up half of the total number of participants. However, the level of contribution to IFAP policy documents was not monitored.

Developing countries participated in 38 % of the 137 international activities that IFAP was involved in 2008. These are relatively low levels of participation owing to the fact that much of the international lobbying work is done through speeches and meetings led by the IFAP President or Vice-Presidents, or committee work done by the Secretariat. If these activities are excluded, then participation of developing countries in IFAP international lobbying rises to 68 %. However, this is still below the target of 75%. For regional lobbying, there is a high level of participation of the Mediterranean region and of Latin America in non-IFAP regional events. The lowest level of regional lobbying was for Africa.

Concerning IFAP’s own activities, 25 events were organised in 2008 and developing countries participated in 92 % of them compared with 36 % for the industrialised countries. This shows that IFAP is primarily organising events that are of direct interest to developing countries.

Challenges

AgriCord and Agriterra are dedicated to help IFAP become the effective organisation for policy matters. For reasons mentioned earlier, this policy work has to be done efficiently and effectively. There could be a more systematic collection of member interests, and their translation into lobby issues and organisations or institutes to be lobbied. There should be a pool of farm leaders, categorised by their expertise. It is needed to define which skills and backgrounds are needed to make the representatives effective in advocacy missions. Farm leaders engaged in those missions need systematic instruction or terms of reference and the outcomes are to be fed back to the organisations that mandated the lobby, along with the general communications on IFAP affairs. These IFAP communications have improved enormously and give members and outsiders a clear view of who was where in what event for IFAP.

Agriterra, the agri-agency dealing with the projects in the IFAP secretariat, AgriCord and IFAP have to meet the challenges mentioned together. Clear decisions have to be made on the issues raised and clear strategic lines of action for the work in the future have to be decided upon.

HARVESTED STORY
Strengthening advocacy and enhancement of membership development
07aa-4864 – work area 4: Institutional development
(FFF, Philippines)

The Federation of Free Farmers (FFF) on the Philippines carries out an organic rice project. FFF was mostly active in political lobby and advocacy concerning land reform. For that reason farmers were members of the organisation, but as soon as they became landowners, they became inactive in the organisation. Therefore FFF started facilitating the implementation of organic rice. This attracts more members. FFF facilitates the implementation of organic rice, organises trainings, provides up-to-date information concerning the evolvement of technologies and introduces organic rice to the public. Demonstration-farms are installed and the varieties of rice seeds are updated every year.

Rey Fallaria is one of the farmers participating in the organic rice project. Rey and his family live in San Agustin in Occidental Mindoro. He has a farm of 14 ha. Rey started the production of rice by seeding 50 varieties of rice. After the outcome of the first harvest, he limited that number to 20 and now he produces 3 varieties. From the total of 14 ha, he uses 1,5 ha for organic rice and in the next cropping he plans to expand to 3 ha. He produces sufficient fertilizer for himself and can sell a part of it. Rey: “I try not to sell my rice to the traders, because their prices are low. The government is paying a better price.” With help of FFF he is better able to market his products. As Rey was one of the first to start producing in an organic way, he can also sell organic rice seeds. Other farmers cannot simply apply these seeds without sufficient training. Rey is one of the trainers of FFF.

The target of FFF is that one day their member farmers become a mass producer of organic rice and are able to supply the supermarkets. It will be important to gain credibility from consumers, for example by establishing a certificate. Rey tells that producing organically is already beneficial for him: “I have more income, my input costs are lower and my income comes from different sources.”