Task 16 - Confirming the axioma on the development impact of producer organisations AgriCord One-for-all: task 16

Why do agri-agencies do the work that they do? Because they think that that work (= strengthening producer organisations, farmers' unions, cooperative societies etc.) contributes to a fairer and more prosperous society. Without membership organisations that know how to promote the interests of their members, it is hard to see how fairness and democracy  can ever come into place. Alexis de Tocqueville is on our side: “In order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases.” Besides, historically speaking, it is easy to argue that countries in Europe are, in general, pleasant to live in as a result of strong professional organisations,

This theory of change of the agri-agencies is not always accepted, sometimes even questioned. The goal of this project is to bring so much argumentation (see above) and empirical evidence together that it (the theory of change) becomes uncontested. Together with scientists, and under the coordination of Dutch research institutions and Agriterra, we wil do this in a book, to be published by October 2014: Family farms and producer organisations as generators of (rural) development.

1.	Goals

This project is to produce irrefutable evidence and publicity on the thesis of the agri-agencies that strong producer organisations have a positive influence on development, in at least three respects: economic growth, equality and democratization. The intuitive argument, the one from common sense, has never been phrased better than two centuries ago, by Alexis de Tocqueville: “In order that men remain civilized or become so, the art of associating must be developed and perfected among them in the same ratio as equality of conditions increases.” Historically speaking, it is easy to argue that countries in Europe are, in general, pleasant to live in as a result of strong professional organisations, preventing verticalism in decision-making and entrepreneurship. Bits and pieces of empirical evidence have also been coming forward. Its is now time to bring these intuitive and historical arguments together with real-life evidence.

2.	Proposed activities 

The task consisted and consists of the following activities:

•	Dissemination of the call among relevant social scientists and practitioners, including the fellow agri-agencies (spring and summer 2013 
•	Based on presentations and research activities that responded to the call, the symposium ‘Producer organisations as generators of (rural) development’ was organized by CIDIN (Nijmegen), WUR (Wageningen) and Agriterra on October 10th, 2013 in Wageningen 
•	Publication of a book on the topic at the occasion of the UN International Year of Family Farming (IYFF): “Family farms, producer organisations and development”. The book is to be edited by Roldan Muradian (CIDIN-Nijmegen), Jos Bijman (Wageningen UR) and Jur Schuurman (Agriterra). 
 
 The following time line applies for the book production: 
15 November 2013: Submission of abstracts (1 page) (see the Call, uploaded as a File under the Proposal tab)
1 December: Invitation to contribute full chapter 
Nov / Dec 2013: Editors put together synopsis of the book and negotiate with publishers 
15 January 2014: Submission of the draft contribution 
Jan + Feb 2014: Review by editors and outside reviewers 
28 February: Authors are notified about requested improvement 
30 April: Submission of final contribution 
October 2014: Book launch  

3.	Envisioned outputs and outcomes 

The main outcome is the book. It will seek to present the state of the art on socio-economic research on relationship between farmer organisations, producer organisations and other forms of economic collective action by family farmers worldwide and the impact on rural development and even development more generally. Since the World Bank published its 2008 World Development Report, producer organisations have been in the spotlight of academics and policy makers, due to renewed interest in agriculture as the main driver of rural development. Family farms are still the dominant organisational form in agricultural production, but major changes are taking place. Producer organisations have always been important for providing farmers with access to inputs and output markets. However, the increasing importance of vertical coordination in value chains and quality assurance schemes has changed the role of producer organisations and therefore their relationship with family farms. 
Producer organisations (POs) often have been associated with social capital. However, the academic debate on whether POs need to be based on existing social capital in order to function well, or whether they induce the formation of social capital, or both, is not settled. 

The book will target an audience of academics as well as practitioners interested in scientific research on the mentioned issues. It will consist of two types of contribution. About two thirds of the chapters will be academic contributions, such as literature reviews, empirical studies, conceptual papers. About one third of the book will consist of more practice-oriented chapters, such as case studies of intervention projects. It will be published by an international academic publishing house. 

Together with the experts on communication within AgriCord (and perhaps in the framework of task 15: external communication) a strategy will be devised to give due attention to the publication and its tenets, in order that the overall purpose is served: general acceptance and awareness of the thesis/axioma.  

4.	Involvement of other agri-agencies

•	discussion and modification/approval of these draft TOR in Montpellier (11-12 November, 2013)
•	presentation of potential contributions (abstracts) and recruitment of researchers in the respective home countries who are willing to present an abstract. UPA-DI (Canada) is actively searching for possible input. 

5.	Budget (December 2013 – October 2014)

Taskmanager (Jur Schuurman): 10 days in 2013, 21 in 2014 = 31 days 
Associated task manager 1 (Kees Blokland): 5 and 10 days = 15 days 
Ass. task manager 2 (Martin Couture): 5 days 
Translations, original research, publisher's fee: 50.000

Total	EUR 95.368

6.	Proposed team leader 

Jur Schuurman, senior management advisor at Agriterra. Kees Blokland (Agriterra) and Martin Couture are involved.

7.	Justification 

With this task, AgriCord hopes to contribute to the general acceptance of the vision that development is a matter of people and their organisations. If they do not play a role in policy discussions and the realisation of concrete projects, development will never be sustainable, in the sense that there will be no ownership by the main stakeholders of development: the people who want to lift themselves out of poverty. If this vision is indeed accepted through (among others) corroboration by scientific research, the need for an elaborate impact assessment system on the work of agri-agencies will be less pressing. In other words, this project is an attempt to make the development effectiveness  of the agri-agencies' work uncontested. 

In the envisaged book, after setting forth a few more  theoretical and historical arguments, we will proceed to mention a few mechanisms that underpin this train of thought. Among them: 
•	Organisations are a school for democracy instead of violence, since they make dialogue possible by their very nature 
•	Organisations and associations enable joint conceptualization and policy formulation (which is always more effective than the sum of many individual formulations)
•	They are a channel for uploading (from members to society as a whole) and downloading (the other way round) information, goods and services
•	They enable specialisation and mobilisation of labour and capital
•	They increase market power for individual farmers

to produce irrefutable evidence and publicity on the thesis of the agri-agencies that strong producer organisations have a positive influence on development, in at least three respects: economic growth, equality and democratization