CHINA – The Development of Gansu Federation of Farmers Cooperatives

Gansu, China – The Gansu Federation of Farmers Cooperatives was established on April 24, 2016, and is a joint-stock organization based on the previous Gansu Association of Farmers Cooperatives, sponsored jointly by 23 cooperatives. With the purpose of earning profits, it drives the farmers’ cooperatives of the province for joint development. It has now 23 member cooperatives and more than 2,000 farmer members, spreading over 86 counties and districts of the province, with the industries covering plantation and cultivation, processing, sale, transport, warehousing, etc.

Since it was established, the Federation has been active in building a platform for all the member cooperatives and providing diversified services.

1. Open Gansu Excellent Fresh Agricultural Products Exhibition Building to show the most characteristic excellent fresh agricultural products of Gansu.
2. Set up characteristic agricultural product direct-sale shops to provide farmers’ cooperatives with a platform for sales of agricultural products in the sales mode of integrating direct sales of shops and O2O and promote gradually nationwide the agricultural products of farmers.
3. Undertake the Gansu Characteristic Agricultural Product Exhibition to provide the citizens with quality agricultural products.
4. Participate Tajikistan-China Gansu Export Fair to establish a platform and provide opportunities for the cooperatives of Gansu to undertake economic cooperation and trade in Tajikistan and Central Asia.
5. Establish the provincial agricultural data platform for integrating the business information of farmers, production, processing, and sale information of agricultural products, information on agricultural culture, and information on agricultural product characteristics and gene analysis.

To promote the management and development capacity of farmers, the Federation organizes the member cooperatives for visits and special education and training to promote their management capacity and level, regulate their internal management system, enhance their quality control system and supervision mechanism, and promote comprehensively the development level of farmers. To promote the brand image of agricultural products, the Federation assists farmers in trademark registration, brand promotion, and brand cultivation, widen continuously the media marketing channel, strengthens the advertisement, models, and propagates the brand image of agricultural products, and promotes the market recognition of the brands by making adequate use of different resources platforms and modern media means.

However, due to the short period of establishment and lack of experience, during the development, the Federation is also observed with some problems to be resolved urgently, e.g., relatively low organizational capacity, loose contact between the Federation and the cooperatives, inadequate capacity to motivate the cooperatives to participate in different activities, necessity to increase the work efficiency and enhance the cooperation fitness.

In the future, the Federation will consolidate the service base, promote continuously the service capacity, enhance the cohesion of the Federation, strive to guide the farmers’ cooperatives of Gansu to actualize quality improvement, make breakthroughs in market expansion and project construction, and create more excellent farmers cooperatives.

The Gansu Federation of Farmers Cooperatives is supported by the MTCP2 program, through AMI, the national implementing agency of the program in China.

The Medium-Term Cooperation Program Phase 2 (MTCP2), a five-year capacity-building program supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), and the European Union (EU), has been implemented in 19 countries across three sub-regions—Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Pacific—engaging 1,544 sub-national farmers organizations (FOs) with a total membership of around 22 million farmers. The funding support (total budget of $ 5 million for the whole duration of the project across 19 countries) serves as a catalytic fund that will allow FOs to enhance their capacity to be effective channels of economic services to farmers. The program has contributed to the formation of a strong national platform of FOs with improved capacity to engage in policy processes and mobilize resources from mainstream agricultural development programs like extension services, credit, and pre and post-harvest facilities. The program also helped in transforming farmers’ associations into commodity-based cooperatives to strengthen the role of small-scale farmers within an inclusive and sustainable value chain. The program is being implemented by the consortium Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) and La Via Campesina (LVC).