This course is especially interesting and useful for organizations and persons accompanying producers' organizations and farmer-led value chain or agribusiness cluster development. Farmer agency, organizational capacity building, farmer/cooperative entrepreneurship and voicing farmers' views and interests are some key subjects that strongly feature in the course.
Triggered by structural adjustment, political liberalization and limited private sector development, producers’ organizations have spread and expanded rapidly in developing countries. Increasingly, primary producers’ organizations (POs) are federated up to national and international level. Collective action of smallholders creates economies of scale, reduces transaction risks and hence improves the terms of access to input and output markets.
Through PO’s, farmers can get access to seeds, fertilizer, phyto-sanitary products, equipment and credit. Organized farmers can bulk, store, grade, process and label their products, invest in quality improvement to comply with increasingly demanding standards, exchange market information and develop market intelligence. Producers’ organizations can support the generation and adoption of technological innovations and contribute to agricultural intensification, natural resource management and productivity improvement. Producers’ organizations are of key importance for effective adoption of innovations at farm household level. Producers’ organizations are vehicles for small farmers to voice their views and interests, to participate in policy making and trade negotiations and to develop countervailing power.
At different levels, POs engage in participatory governance and contribute to the deepening of democratic practices and more transparent accountability relations.
Optimizing the Performance of Producers' Organizations is therefore an important cornerstone of any strategy for sustainable rural economic development on a broad range of international challenges (rural poverty, food insecurity, competing claims for natural resources, climate change, inclusive value chain development, agribusiness cluster formation, responsive and transparent governance and participatory policy development).
It is in this context that the Centre for Development Innovation (CDI) of Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) organizes this two week course on "Optimizing the Performance of Producer Organizations" (OPPO). This course, which is organized in Wageningen (Netherlands) from 11-22 October 2010, will provide participants with state-of-the-art knowledge and skills for accompanying capacity strengthening and performance improvement of member-base producers' organizations. Among others, it will discuss issues like farmer empowerment, cooperative entrepreneurship and participatory policy development.
The course is designed for both governmental and non-governmental policy maker and development professionals that seek to understand, enter into dialogue and partner with producers' organizations. For more information about the objectives, focus, central questions, training methods, program and five key axes of the course, please have a look at the attached flyer.
If you are interested, please contact Maria.Soelen@wur.nl of CDI's course support department. For sources of funding, please contact your partner organization(s) and/or visit: www.cdi.wur.nl/UK/services/Courses/Fellowships. The application deadline is 1 September 2010. For additional information and online application: www.cdi.wur.nl/UK/newsagenda.
