News

Mechanisation: a climate adaptation strategy for smallholder farmers in Africa

Did you know a simple practice such as timely planting is a Climate Smart Agricultural Practice? Timely planting for a smallholder farmer, as simple as it may sound, depends on several factors that the farmer is exposed to, such as availability of labour, the ability to pay for the labour on time, access to seeds and other inputs, and much more access to extension and weather information. In many cases, African smallholder farmers do not have access to all these resources at the same time. Due to the fact that most smallholder farmers are fully dependent on rain fed agriculture, a small disruption in this cycle causes significantly great losses for them.

Powerwoman 9: Pamela Koskei

Agriterra trained 14 strong willed female (future) leaders in the first ever ‘Female Leadership in Agricultural Cooperatives Masterclass’, held in Kenya. The group is composed of Zambian, Ugandese and Kenyan participants, representing organisations that are active in coffee, dairy, sunflower or credit and saving.

Main purpose of the masterclass is to strengthen the leadership skills of these women. These highly motivated cooperative leaders return full of energy and ambitions back to their respective cooperatives, better equipped to take up their leadership roles and make a change contributing to closing the gender gap in agricultural cooperatives.

Powerwoman 9: Pamela Koskei (51) from BAMSCOS 

Annual Report 2019

Agriterra has become a relevant player among the internationally active entities from the Netherlands. We do that with a unique profile on cooperative business development. After having seen successes and results of our approach, a growing number of governments call on us to help them to segment their cooperative landscape and help them build a cooperative development practice. We are exploring ways to respond to these expectations and bring our approaches to scale, maintaining our primary focus on cooperatives and farmer organisations.

How a big cooperative can support a small cooperative

PHILIPPINES – Sorosoro Ibaba Development Cooperative (SIDC) is one of the largest agri-based cooperatives in the country with 40,725 members nationwide. SIDC’s 3 main businesses are feed milling, savings and loans, and consumer retailing. Despite the growth the coop has achieved, SIDC is still in an expansion mode and constantly sees this as opportunities for more farmers to be part of its value chain.

Creative solutions to minimise the effect of COVID-19

Wordera Farmers Cooperative Union (FCU) in Ethiopia has several business activities. The key businesses are: output marketing, an agricultural service centre and animal feed production. 
The union is facing several challenges due to COVID-19, such as: finding enough input for their animal feed production and finding markets for their members’ beans and chickpeas. Additionally, many of the primary cooperatives of the union are facing difficulties in repaying their loans to the union.

Powerwoman 8: Ann Tuwei

Agriterra trained 14 strong willed female (future) leaders in the first ever ‘Female Leadership in Agricultural Cooperatives Masterclass’, held in Kenya. The group is composed of Zambian, Ugandese and Kenyan participants, representing organisations that are active in coffee, dairy, sunflower or credit and saving.

Main purpose of the masterclass is to strengthen the leadership skills of these women. These highly motivated cooperative leaders return full of energy and ambitions back to their respective cooperatives, better equipped to take up their leadership roles and make a change contributing to closing the gender gap in agricultural cooperatives.

Powerwoman 8: Ann Tuwei (46) from Kimologit Farmers' Cooperative Society 

Aim high, start small and keep going

Vietnam - To adapt to the situation of Covid-19 and ensure we still deliver the best services to our clients, many of our trainings and missions are conducted at online platform. We also realise the potential of distance working with our clients. However, online exchange programme might still be very difficult :) So we are very happy to eventually organise the exchange programme amongst our 4 clients on sustainable production in rice commodity after 3 months of delay due to Covid-19.

Innovative alliance stands up for farmers

Last Friday, a consortium of financial institutions, investors and non-profit organisations, initiated by Agriterra, has asked the Dutch government to release money to prevent the disastrous economic and humanitarian consequences of the current Covid-19 crisis. This is in line with recently published advice from the Adviesraad Internationale Vraagstukken (Advisory Council International Affairs) to the Dutch government; ‘The Netherlands and the worldwide approach of COVID-19’.