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WFP Ethiopia Country Office Purchase for Progress 2nd Round Case Studies Consolidated Final Report Qt sold (mt) 6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 Qt sold 1000 0 2009 2010 2011 Years Damot `s cooperative union quantity sold in Mt July 2012 1 Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................... 3 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................................ 6 2. FARMERS ORGANIZATION ............................................................................................................................... 7 2.1. Farmers’ Cooperative Unions ..................................................................................................................... 7 2.1.1 Sidama Elto Farmers` Cooperative Union in SNNPR ................................................................................. 7 2.1.2. Damot Farmer`s Cooperative Union in Amhara ..................................................................................... 12 2.1.3. Mira Farmers` Cooperative Union in Oromiya ......................................................................................... 16 2.2. Farmer`s Primary Cooperatives ................................................................................................................ 20 2.2.1. Shende Primary Farmers’ Cooperative in Amhara .................................................................................. 20 2.2.2. Jalela Credit and Saving Primary Cooperative in Oromiya ....................................................................... 24 2.2.3. Dila Olka Farmers Primary Cooperative in SNNPR ................................................................................. 27 3. SMALL-HOLDER FARMERS ............................................................................................................................ 30 3.1. A Female Head of Household & PC Leader in Amhara Region ....................................................................... 30 3.2. A Male Head of Household in Oromiya Region: Working as an Assembler for His PC ...................................... 34 4. APPENDICES .................................................................................................................................................. 36 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The baseline surveys of farmer organizations, smallholder farmers and traders in year one establish baseline values for a core set of key indicators against which the impact of P4P on these groups will be measured in end evaluation of the programs in 2014. In addition, annual monitoring surveys of the participating groups assess to what extent the program performs specified activities and produces expected outputs. Cases studies are also a critical element of the learning and sharing pillar within P4P. The purpose of the case studies is to understand how P4P is affecting its target groups, to draw practical lessons by identifying needs and best practices in WFP’s initiative to provide a market opportunity to small-holder farmers through CUs. This report constitutes the second round of such case studies. Individual and group interviews were used using a semi-structured interview format where six farmer’s organizations and two smallholder farmers in Oromiya, SNNPR, and Amhara regions of Ethiopia were covered by the studies. Field work was undertaken from 15- 30 December 2011 where programme officers from VAM, P4P and PCU have involved in the studies. Here under is summary of the report: Services/benefits: FOs (primary cooperative and cooperative unions) provide service including: (a) Agricultural inputs like fertilizer and seeds (which are of course limited by shortages and high prices); (b) Better markets for member products; (c) Seed multiplication especially maize; (d) Provision of consumable goods like sugar and oil for members and non-members; and (f) Dividend. These benefits and service are the driving force for membership. Storage and financial capacity: While some PCs own modern warehouse, most PCs do have traditional warehouses. CUs on other hand have relatively better storage capacity except few like Mira CU that do not have warehouse at all. In both cases, FOs have limited storage capacity. To solve this problem temporarily, WFP donated rub halls to selected low/medium capacity CUs and five prefabricated warehouses are to be provided to selected CUs. Lack of credit is one of the major factors limiting CUs operation. FOs are denied credit for a number of reasons including lack of collateral and banks with poor past experience with cooperatives. When credit is supplied, it is significantly below the amount needed. Considering Sidam Elto CU in 2011, for example, the annual credit requirement was about Birr 20 million (USD 1,165,025.92), but the union received about Birr 3.5 million (USD 203,879.54) loans for grain marketing, improved seed collection and consumable goods distribution. On the other hand, CUs in Amhara region (like Damot) do not face such problem as the regional government in recent years provides collateral to access an annual loan from Commercial Bank of Ethiopia that reaches Birr 30 million (USD 1,747,538.88) per year for agricultural inputs and the CU renders 50% of the agricultural inputs cost to PCs as loan and utilizes the remaining money for procurement of grains. Unlike CUs in other regions, this helps Damot CU to aggregate large volume of commodities from farmers. Aggregation and marketing: CUs aggregate commodities from farmers through PCs. Farmers prefer to sell commodities to FO because of different benefits including dividend, agricultural inputs and mark-up price per quintal. Moreover, most farmers do not want to sell their agricultural produce to private traders because they feel that private traders cheat in weighing commodities and farmers trust the FOs much more than traders as well. Most farmers sell immediately after 3 harvest to fulfil their cash requirement and some of them hold the grain stock for sale in May and June, when prices are higher. FOs remains in the market for a short period of time because of limited capital. According to the FOs` management, traders enter first into the market and even go to farmers’ homes to aggregate commodities partly because they have trucks and Isuzu vehicles. Sometimes they pay advance payment via their brokers as well. Traders are price settlers but they present themselves to farmers as if they are paying a higher price. When a FO enters the market, prices goes up but it is forced to quickly withdraw due to limited financial capacity. CUs have better market opportunity than PCs as they have options including government institutions, consumer cooperatives and NGO although most of them require limited volume. FOs gets market information from different places via telephone, on spot discovery and media and it is found that price fluctuation is highly constraining commodity aggregation. Meeting market quality standards: FOs require quality product than traders and pay better price accordingly. However, FOs do not consider quality while supplying commodities to buyers other than WFP because there is no extra price for quality product rather there will be weight loss and it is a tough activity as well (NGOs require relative quality product than other buyers). “Member primary cooperative are sometimes preferred to sell to traders where quality is not a requirement” says CUs management. Women participation: Women participation is low both at PC and CU level. Few unions like Sidama Elto are encouraging member PCs to increase women memberships and it has been indicated that women members are increasing at PC level (no data available yet) because of awareness creation by the NGO, government and the union as well. Unions like Damot on the other hand are lagging behind and the union believes that gender promotion activity requires the integration with PCs, government and other actors engaged in gender interventions. Mira union is exemplary in increasing women`s participation where women constitute 25% of the general assembly, 30% of the leadership and 35% in the PCs membership. “Women are actively participating in the different meetings and expressing their ideas”, says Feyessa, Union manager. Among the 19 member PCs in the union, two PCs are organized mainly by women (wives and female headed households) and the union is working in collaboration with the local government to organize three new women PCs as well. “Our interest is to work with women because they are trustful, hardworking and use money properly for their family” says Feyessa. In 2011, one PC organized by women supplied 30 mt maize to P4P- the largest supply by this PC to date. Shende PC has been increasing female members since the first case study was conducted in 2010 from 355 to 545 in 2011. Recent increased awareness and understanding on the amount of dividends and other benefits that a member household receives is a significant contributing factor for the change. The executive committee members pledged that in an upcoming general assembly promotion will be made in order to increase enrollment & participation of currently married women; and then increase their proportion up to 80 percent of the total female members of the area. According to the management, fee is not a problem for women to join the PC. Dila Olka PC on the other hand has 200 total members of whom one quarter