Background

Farmers’ organizations have a key role to play in advocating for change in policies and institutional arrangements to ensure that such policies and institutional arrangements meet the needs of their membership. However, farmers’ organizations often lack access to the information and evidence needed to develop pro-active proposals for change. In addition, the link between farmers’ organizations and national and international research is often weak, with a lack of research results on topics that matter most to farmers’ organizations and their members.

This side event presents the experiences emerging from the Empowering smallholder farmers in markets (ESFIM) programme¹. Through collaboration between national farmers’ organizations, local research providers and members of the AGRINATURA consortium, the ESFIM programme seeks to support and foster a research-advocacy interface that generates demand-driven action research supportive of policy activities that farmers’ organizations have themselves prioritized.

Objectives of the event

The objectives of the side event are to:

• share first-hand experiences of national farmers’ organizations on how they have identified and used research evidence to formulate feasible, evidence-based propositions for changes in policies and institutional arrangements that empower smallholder farmers and their organizations in local, regional and international markets
• dialogue with participants on the key lessons learned through such processes: what works well, what works less well, and why
• discuss how such processes might be strengthened and scaled-up.

Expected outcomes

The expected outcomes include:

• raised awareness of the value of farmer organization-driven, research-based evidence in policy and institutional change at the national level
• shared experience on key policy initiatives to empower smallholder farmers in markets
• deepened understanding of the challenges and opportunities of linking farmer organization-driven research and policy advocacy
• drawing out of key recommendations on how to enable research to better support the advocacy agenda of farmers’ organizations.

Agenda

Chair: Stephen Muchiri, CEO, Eastern Africa Farmers' Federation (EAFF)
Presentations: (60 minutes)
Three country case examples will outline the evidence-to-policy process and the experiences of the farmers’ organizations themselves, what they did and how evidence contributed to policy or institutional change in favour of the smallholder; and a final presentation will provide a perspective from the research partners.

Strengthening farmers’ organizations’ advocacy platforms on smallholder development issues: addressing cooperative law and taxation in Peru

Lorenzo Castillo, Coordinator, Junta Nacional de Café (JNC), Peru
A lobby agenda has been developed by a group of farmers’ organizations engaged in collective marketing (rice, alpaca wool, coffee, cocoa, potatoes), led by the Junta Nacional de Café (JNC), for inclusion in the strategy of the multi-stakeholder platform on agricultural policy - La Convención Nacional del Agro Peruano (CONVEAGRO). This agenda helped to refocus CONVEAGRO to address key issues that affect smallholders access to markets such as: the reintroduction of VAT on transactions of members sale to the cooperative that they self-manage; administrative hurdles that prevent access to government procurement for school feeding programmes; access of farmers’ organizations to regional investment funds; and policies that define quality parameters and enable marketing strategies that differentiate on product qualities. ESFIM provided research support to document relevant case studies on these issues, and supported JNC to lead a successful multi-year advocacy strategy. The presentation will focus in particular on the evidence-to-policy process relating to cooperative law and taxation.

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Developing institutions with an eye on smallholder interests: the Agricultural Commodity Exchange System in the Philippines

Raul Montemayor, National Manager, Free Farmers Federation Cooperatives, Inc. (FFFCI), the Philippines
ESFIM supported the participation of farmers in the design of a national Agricultural Commodity Exchange System. Such a system seeks to bring together buyers and sellers to trade through registered brokers and as such the system provides both opportunities and challenges in particular for the smallholder farmer as well as the small-scale entrepreneur. This presentation will present the process and the work undertaken which included a baseline survey in key maize-producing area, an exchange visit to Africa to share lessons on the operation of Agricultural Commodity Exchange Systems, and the design of training tools tailored to the needs and capacities of farmers’ organizations and cooperatives as well as small-scale maize traders.

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Bringing evidence of policy impacts on smallholders to the policy makers: the case of input and output markets in Kenya

John Mutunga, CEO, Kenyan National Federation of Agricultural Producers (KENFAP), Kenya
With support from ESFIM, KENFAP made a critical assessment of government interventions in input and output markets under the National Agricultural Accelerated Input Access Programme (NAAIAP). Specifically, KENFAP examined the use of a voucher system for subsided maize seed and fertilizer put in place by NAAIAP and its impact on yield and on farmer income. Based on this work, KENFAP proposed changes to the NAAIAP policy through the preparation of a memorandum to the Government on food insecurity. KENFAP further sought to strengthen mechanisms to improve smallholder produce marketing through the use of the Warehouse Receipt System (WRS) and contract farming.

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Challenges and opportunities in linking research evidence to policy processes of farmers’ organizations: the viewpoint of research partners

Giel Ton, Programme Manager, ESFIM programme, LEI Wageningen University and Research Centre, Netherlands 
Building on the preceding presentations, this presentation will draw together some of the wider challenges and opportunities in linking research evidence to policy processes of farmers’ organizations and some of the lessons learned from the work of ESFIM in over ten countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America in support to farmers’ organizations.

Open discussion: (50 minutes)
Conclusions: (10 minutes): Felicity Proctor, Consultant to the ESFIM programme
Closing remarks: Stephen Muchiri, CEO, Eastern Africa Farmers' Federation (EAFF)

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