Cooperation between ForFarmers and Agriterra
11-09-2017
Agriterra and ForFarmers will begin cooperating in order to help professionalise farmers’ organisations and cooperatives in emerging markets. Jan Potijk, director of ForFarmers Nederland and Kees Blokland, director of Agriterra, signed the memorandum on this past Friday.
Kees Blokland (l.) en Jan Potijk
ForFarmers will offer its employees the option to make their knowledge and expertise available for Agriterra advisory assignments and training programmes in emerging markets in, for instance, Africa, Asia and South America. In more concrete terms, this means that ForFarmers employees can register to help with advisory issues at agricultural cooperatives that Agriterra supports with knowledge. After approval from both ForFarmers and Agriterra, a ForFarmers employee can be deployed. The employee must use some of their own holiday leave time for part of this and ForFarmers will compensate for the remaining days. Travel and accommodation expenses will be paid by Agriterra. An assignment typically lasts 1 to 2 weeks and is performed by a team. In addition to the ForFarmers employee, the team will consist of an Agriterra employee, a local employee, and another "Agripooler", an expert with a different area of expertise who has also been deployed by Agriterra.
Agriterra, founded in 1997 by a number of Dutch agricultural and horticultural organisations, supports, farmers' organisations and cooperatives in emerging markets with knowledge and organisational advice. Agriterra contributes to an industrialisation of farmer organisations and cooperatives in the country and to quick economic growth. At the same time, balance needs to be achieved (or retained) between demand for food and food supply as well as between population growth and the growth of employment opportunities.
ForFarmers is committed "For the Future of Farming". The company works side-by-side with its
customers towards healthier livestock and greater efficiency on the farm, leading to better returns for farmers. Agriterra places the focus on sharing its knowledge and experiences in the realisation of its goal of enabling farmers' organisations in emerging markets to contribute to the production of meat, eggs, and dairy in a sustainable way. ForFarmers supports both this objective as well as the approach, which is closely in keeping with the three key values of ForFarmers: sustainability, ambition, and partnership.
