Turkey's experience of establishing partnerships started as a program to establish and support government funded type of saving and agricultural production cooperatives, with the aim of supporting farmers who want to farm in unused public lands as well as support them in their  smallholder agricultural activities. Since then, the Turkish Republic has  implemented various programs and models to improve success of forging alliances for sustainable smallholders agricultures.

By taking into time constrains into account, we would just like to share some important outcomes of these programs implemented  which we believe could be of use and  further studies in other countries. We would also express our willingness if it is requested,  to share lessons gained from these experiences and also help design and implement new programs together with IFAD in our country as well as other member countries.

Summary of the most important lessons learned from our experiences includes agricultural extension which should be the  centre and the most important component of the studies aimed at  forging alliances for smallholders.

These extension activities should not be only based on lectures given by academics to the farmers. It definitely should use other innovative methodologies such as participatory rural development assessments methodology and leaders farmers methodologies (for example AGLink of ACDI-VOCA as a means of today’s ICT infrastructures).

Before everything, a comprehensive agribusiness development, agricultural entrepreneurship support and agribusiness value chain management culture should be established first among experts in the agricultural public institutions. Every expert should have a common goal of increasing the  income of smallholders by improving profitable and sustainable agricultural practices and  not just implementing new academic information. They should  also calculate the  profitability of every action.

Developing entrepreneurship and collaboration skills of smallholders should be another priority of these programs, specifically targeting  the young and women farmers.

Specifically and carefully designed rural financing schemes for each program area should be important in every program. Such rural financing schemes should be crafted to reward success and collaboration among farmers as well as developing linkages with other stakeholders of the agribusiness value chains.

Not only  agricultural production, but the whole value chain of agribusiness should be subject to  the forging of alliances for smallholders. Innovative components and programs such as establishing contract farming schemes with bigger processers; helping farmers joint ventures with bigger agribusiness companies to process and market their produce should be inseparable in every program.

As we mentioned before, these are the most important findings we thought we could share with you our valuable partners. We again emphasize our willingness in working together with you to explore new ways in  forging alliances for sustainable smallholder agriculture.