News
Private sector-led strengthening of agricultural cooperative partners key to sustainable value chains
PHILIPPINES - The agriculture sector contributed 23% of the national labor force in 2020. Majority of the farmers within this sector are smallholders, with farm holdings under one hectare.
Additionally, farmers remain as one of the poorest labor forces in the country. They are often food insecure, and living in rural communities with limited access to markets and services. They also engage in other livelihoods in the informal economy to add to their income from farming. Despite these, smallholder farmers produce food for a substantial proportion of the population. They try to help themselves by participating in and organising through cooperatives, but they also encounter problems in running these cooperatives properly. This becomes problematic for large cooperative enterprises and agribusiness companies that need reliable agricoop partners as suppliers in their value chains.
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Agridigitalización project seeks digital solutions
Last Friday, more than 200 farmers participated on a Webinar to launch our new project AGRIdigitalización, which leverages the experience, know-how, tools and models of digital finance services, e-trade and technology providers towards the rural poor in Latin America and the Caribbean. Financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and implemented by Agriterra in alliance with Agros International, the Foundation for Rural Business Development (Funder) and the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), AGRidigitalización seeks e-commerce and digital solutions to overcome the increasing obstacles for farmers to access market and financing due to the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Agriterra announces membership at the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines
Philippines - Agriterra Philippines strengthens ties to its Dutch partners as it officially becomes a member of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines (DCCP). As an agri-agency founded by the Dutch agricultural sector in 1997, Agriterra has grown its organisation to spread the mission of strengthening farmers’ organisations worldwide with the end in view of reducing poverty through structural transformation in the countryside. Headquartered in Arnhem, The Netherlands, Agriterra operates globally and has representative offices in 19 countries like Indonesia, Nepal, Vietnam, Peru, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Philippines.
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Flexibility turned the regular offline governance training into an online success
Shorten the general governance training to two days instead of four and partly do this online, will that work? That was the main question before the successful pilot in November, where Habtamu Mekonnen worked together with Jack Goossens from Royal FloraHolland and trained a group of union board members and staff partly via Zoom. Turns out it is a great alternative of giving a training under unusual circumstances.
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Ingabo Syndicate & Agriterra help farmers to multiply their cassava yield by five
- Now, a farmer can harvest more than 50 tons per hectare
- The method used to increase the yield was acquired during a study tour co-organised and sponsored by Ingabo Syndicate and Agriterra
De Groot en Slot B.V. starts long-term onion project
“Using Ethiopian onion varieties and test the best possible circumstances to improve the onion crop will be the starting point of this project”, says Jan Slot of De Groot en Slot B.V., Dutch world market leader in onion seed. A couple of weeks ago the project officially kicked off as the seeds are going into the ground. The knowledge of most of the onion farmers in Ethiopia is mainly passed on from generation to generation. With this project, De Groot en Slot B.V. and Agriterra aim to use that local knowledge and add the expertise of Dutch agricultural research to make the farmers more self-sufficient.
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Leaving nobody behind
As part of Agriterra’s Theory of Change our managing director Kees Blokland advocates to revisit the proposition of leaving nobody behind in agriculture which might run emotionally against the humanitarian vision of society that most of us share.
This scheme, embedded in Agriterra’s core work, is simply about selecting viable smallholder farmers that through their farmers’ organisations and cooperatives have decided to take the lead in their development and don’t wait for aid or public support to come and fix their problems. That’s why we emphasise the importance of working with ambitious farmers who are selected through scoping and assessment.
However, Team Kenya has turn it up a notch higher!!!
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Virtual Launching of the Philippine Agricultural Cooperative Development Agenda
Leading Agricultural Cooperatives in the Philippines rally behind plan to drive growth, competitiveness and sustainability in the agriculture sector
PHILIPPINES - Agriterra announces the virtual launch of the Agricultural Cooperative Development Agenda (ACDA) on February 24, 2021, to be led by some of the country’s largest and most influential agricultural cooperatives. The ACDA aims to support the creation of an enabling policy and business environment to strengthen the position of agri-coops in the value chain, the market, and with government and the private sector.
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