News

Cooperative assessments: the starting point for professionalizing agricultural cooperatives

Philippines, June 9, 2021—In the last two decades, Agriterra has become an international leader in providing business development and advisory services to agricultural cooperatives across Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Part of this service delivery process is performing a cooperative assessment (CA) to ensure that agricultural cooperative (agri coop) clients receive targeted and appropriate capacity building interventions that will enable them to achieve their desired changes.

From paper administration to Sage 50 users in 7 days

Financial administration on paper now belongs to the past for 20 unions in Ethiopia producing animal feed. The unions are equipped and trained in software program Sage 50, as requested by ACDI/VOCA. Three other unions joined as they were not using the software to full capacity. Over the course of project, these unions have mastered the skills of digital accounting. 

Marco Schouten new CEO Agriterra

Arnhem, 27 May 2021

Marco Schouten is appointed as the new CEO of Agriterra. By mid September he will succeed Kees Blokland, the founder of Agriterra, who will retire at the beginning of Q4. Schouten: “I see it as a great honour to follow in Kees Blokland’s footsteps, further shaping the future of a wonderful organisation like Agriterra.” 

GROW Coop facilitates stronger management of Agricultural Cooperatives

Philippines, May 2021 - Agricultural cooperatives, especially small- and medium sized, are often faced by similar challenges that hinder their growth and sustainability: poor market access, lack of capital, inadequate member interest, and lack of management capacity to operate a business, among others. The GROW Coop project, funded by USAID and implemented by Agriterra, is helping address this problem by facilitating the development of large agri coops that serve as Local Resource Organizations (LROs) to capacitate and support smaller agri coops so they can have greater participation in agricultural value chains. This will ultimately increase opportunities for farmer members and boost their incomes and overall well-being.

How can small holder farmers be involved in Carbon Farming sustainably?

Green gas emissions are more than 50% higher than it was in 1990(UNDP). Agriculture has been cited as one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas emission that cause climate change, contributing about 17% directly through agricultural activities and an additional 7%-14% through land use management(OECD,2016). The net effect is a long-lasting change to our climate system and the warming of our planet could have an irreversible impact if we do not act. On the bright side, Agriculture is the only ONE of the sectors that has the ability to transform from a Net Emitter to a Net Sequestrator of CO2  beneficially(Climate beneficial, Carbon Cycle institute). 

Promoting sustainable forestry employment and empowering small-scale forest producers

Negros Occidental, Philippines - In March 2021, sustainable forest management company Citicore Candlewick Bioenergy, Inc. (CCBI) formally joined the consortium of Local Resource Organizations (LROs) under the Generating Rural Opportunities by Working with Cooperatives (GROW Coop) Project funded by the USAID and implemented by Agriterra. The partnership aims to strengthen the organizational capacities of small-scale forest producers and cooperatives that CCBI works with in its biomass plantation operations in the municipalities of Isabela, Binalbagan and Himamaylan. The capacity development support for the cooperatives is aimed to result in their increased representation, participation in value chain processes, and household income. 

Cees van Rij steps down as manager agri-advice in Agriterra

After working for Agriterra for 19 years, Cees van Rij decided to end his work for Agriterra at the end of June. He would have liked to have been entrusted with the responsibility of leading Agriterra in scaling up and further embedding our approach in Dutch international development cooperation efforts. At the end of May, the Agriterra board will announce the name of the person it has chosen to succeed Kees Blokland, the current Agriterra CEO. 

First steps taken in changing union governance structure in Ethiopia

Adding external board members to a union board is an innovative way of thinking for many Ethiopian board members and government officials. Are the external experts able to truly act in the farmers’ interest? How do you ensure member-control when we include external experts in the union’s governance structure? These and other issues were all discussed during the first lively awareness trainings in August and mid-December. An implementation pilot with 4 unions has just started.