Oxfam’s report promotes farmer’s rights, voices and choices

(VNF) - Oxfam in Vietnam has launched its report titled “Understand farmer’s cooperation and linkage in agricultural production to promote farmers’ rights, voices, and choices: Findings and Policy recommendations”.

The Department of Cooperatives and Rural Development under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD), Coalition for Farmers' Rights and Effectiveness of Vietnamese Agriculture co-organized to launch the report.

Conducted by Oxfam and the Institute of Research and Consultancy on Development (RCD) in three provinces of Vietnam, each of which has regionally specific features of agricultural production and demonstrates market differences, Ninh Binh (representative of the Red River Delta area), Lam Dong (Central Highlands region) and Dong Thap (Mekong Delta region), the report covered 360 households participating in cooperatives and collaborative groups.

Promoting sustainable farmers’ cooperation and linkage has been identified as a crucial policy entry point which if properly addressed would help nurture and develop innovative and more effective patterns of production organization. Experiences from many countries in the world reveal that cooperation and linkages if well-organized would promote the use of farmers’ endogenous power and production efficiency, optimizing the use of natural and social resources, thus ensuring equitable sharing of benefits and risks among actors.

Ensuring benefits and sharing risks equitably, understanding the demand for cooperation and linkage among actors, particularly farmers to effectively and sustainably organized farmers have not been given adequate attention and support.

Statistics show that, since the introduction of the Cooperative Act 2003, there have been at least 143 policies and legal documents on collective economy enacted.

However, understanding on the nature of collective economy remains limited, unable to catch-up with development practices.

Many enacted policies have not yet promoted the proper nature and role of farmers’ organizations as an independent partner in development. They also tend to bias toward promoting the role of cooperatives over collaborative groups. Besides, some policies are overlapping, conflicting, and have low applicability. There is lack of policy that can “leverage” and facilitate innovation.

The report also shows that the trend of cooperation through farmers’ organizations has been increasingly popular compared to direct economic contract between farmers and enterprises. Cooperation and linkage through farmers’ organizations is a better choice to ensure that farmer’s’ concerns and choices are protected. Collaborative group models have significantly increased in quantity and have been a popular choice for many farmers.

The model is more suited to the capacity and demands of farmers because it helps ensure the fundamental principles of voluntary membership, autonomy and independence, and transparency. Nearly 75% of farmers showed support to principles of democratic control and transparency in cooperation and linkage that allow farmers to give their opinions.

The report indicates that farmers’ motivations to join cooperation and linkages are perse and they are influenced by economic, social, environmental and health-related factors. The awareness of long-term benefits and market-oriented production mindset are the two leading factors attributable to high-discipline and cohesion within cooperative linkages.

Local context, production conditions and the vision as well as determination of local authorities have an influence on the characteristics, persity and quality of cooperation and linkages. To participate in the linkages effectively, enterprises need to pay special attention to long term cooperation, better mechanisms for sharing benefits and risks, more transparent and suited price calculation methods to encourage farmers’ commitment.

Capacity of the management team, operating mechanisms and information and communication transparency are the three most important factors. The market-oriented thinking/mindset of participating farmers is the guiding direction deciding product quality, flexibility and the adaptability of linkages.

Social aspect is seen as not much less important as economic aspect in the linkage. 85.6% of respondents confirmed that farmer’s cooperation and linkage helped enhance mutual help and cohesion in the community, reduce the risk of unfair competition, self-lowering of prices and improve negotiation capacity, in both cooperatives and collaborative groups.

In addition, the research discusses future trends of farmer’s cooperation/organization in agriculture, and proposes 16 policy recommendations, covering the points of conceptualization, perspectives and identification of farmers’ cooperation and linkages, policy solutions for policy makers at different levels, and the roles of farmers, farmers’ organizations and enterprises to be promoted in the future.

It contributes an overview of a multidimensional perspective about cooperation and linkage, thus to give recommendations on how to promote effective and sustainable cooperation and linkages in agricultural production as well as the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders involved. Promoting cooperation and linkage needs to stem from practical circumstances, demands, expectations as well as perse cooperation and linkages’ capacities of farmers.

Expectations, farmers are interested in the need to share benefits and risks and playing an active role in the process of developing and operating cooperation and linkages, rather than being imposed by fixed models and cooperative methods. In terms of capacity, farmers need to be trusted and given opportunities to showcase their potentials.

They need supports to participate in new partnerships such as the ones with businesses in the cooperative process of developing sector value chains,” said Ms. Nguyen Le Hoa, a representative of Oxfam in Vietnam.

This report is launched at a critical time when the Government is reviewing policies to promote cooperatives, economic cooperation, and vertical integration in the value chain of agricultural products, thus creating positive and innovative changes for the development of cooperation and linkages and farmer’s organizations, as well as provide a sustainable contribution to the restructuring and renewing agriculture sector of the nation./.

( VNF )