Ningbo, China – The Agricultural Management Institute (AMI) of China conducted a series of activities in Ningbo, China on 9-11 March 2017 to effectively promote the overall development of local farmers’ cooperatives.
Training courses, field visits, policy dialogue, and special publicity were carried out separately during the event. One hundred twenty (120) leaders of cooperatives joined the training on agro-product marketing, and some of them joined the policy dialogue with representatives of local agricultural officials on how to improve the policy implementation effectively.
ALIBABA, the largest e-commerce enterprise group of China, had been invited to the event to provide guidance on internet sales and finance to the cooperatives. Additionally, the China Farmers’ Cooperative magazine allotted a 20-page feature on the achievements of Ningbo cooperative development, which created a positive and progressive development environment for the local coops.
According to the annual plan, AMI will go to Henan, Shanxi, Hebei, Shaanxi, Liaoning, and Ningxia to provide the same services to farmers’ cooperatives in conjunction with local governments. Activities will be designed based on the actual needs of the local cooperatives, thus ultimately achieving the goal of promoting the farmers’ cooperatives development. #
About MTCP2
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 the 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).
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