The Coop Crusader. A million-dollar challenge to CGIAR

MANILA: Amidst the mega million-peso scandals in my country the Philippines, early this New Year I'm avidly reading the press release that says, "CGIAR doubles funding to $1 billion in five years," that is, from $500 million in 2008 to $1 billion in 2013 (17 December 2013, cgiar.org). How huge is that amount? Mammoth. If I earned $10 million a year, it will take me 100 years to earn that total!

I've for the last 7 years been interested in CGIAR because my favorite ICRISAT is part of it. CGIAR, as it prefers to call itself now, is the old Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research that was based in Washington DC. Having reinvented itself from a consultative group to a proactive body, I understand CGIAR is now based at its new headquarters in Montpellier, France at the campus of Agropolis International. From liberal Washington to Roman Catholic France, I Catholic think that's a good sign; it's like Science getting closer to the Church.

The CGIAR Consortium comprises 15 centers, as follows: Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, Center for International Forestry Research, International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas, International Center for Tropical Agriculture, International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, International Food Policy Research Institute, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, International Livestock Research Institute, International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, International Potato Center, International Rice Research Institute, International Water Management Institute, World Agroforestry Centre, and WorldFish. Mostly in Africa and Asia, where you find the world's poorest by the millions.

Richer now by the billion, its funding having doubled, CGIAR expects by 2035 to "lift 150 million people in Asia out of poverty by boosting rice production, provide 12 million African households with sustainable irrigation, save 1.7 million hectares of forest from destruction, and give 50 million poor people access to highly nutritious food crops." That's calling for more of the same: production, irrigation, conservation, and nutrition. Today, we'll focus on rice, because this is "the most widely consumed staple food for a large part of the world's human population, especially in Asia" (Wikipedia). If you can solve the problem of the poor rice farmer, you can solve any problem.

Based on its own pronouncements, CGIAR's vision remains more or less this: A food-secure future. I think that will have to change now, given a climate change in the budget, because CGIAR is 43 years old, now a billionaire, and I believe CGIAR still isn't dreaming big enough!

Here are twin things for CGIAR to think over again:

Food security – CGIAR's old dream of food security for the world's poor rice-based farm families remains a dream. CGIAR was born in 1971; as things stand, some 7 years from now, it will become a Golden Dream, still virtual, still not real. That will be because if those farm families can't have income security, they can't have food security.

Income security – CGIAR is expecting, among other things, to "lift 150 million people in Asia out of poverty by boosting rice production," and I have a problem with that because I don't see the connection! Yes, if you increase the yield of rice, you increase the income of the farmer. But his income from the harvest is not enough for his family's needs, so within the next cropping cycle, again he borrows from a usurer who charges 20%, which the farmer is aware of; and borrows inputs from an aggie supplier who charges 40%, which he is not aware of. The farmer thinks he has no choice, which is why the cycle of poverty keeps on turning.

That is how the Green Revolution did not emancipate from poverty millions of rice farmers in Asia. The problem is less in the narrow mindset of the farmer and more in the narrow economics of the marketplace, where the rich becomes richer and the poor poorer.

So now we turn to the FAO for an economics lesson in banking with farmers. I quote from fao.org (in italics), with my notes following:

FAO’s solution was to introduce into the project a version of warrantage, or inventory credit system, used by European farmers in the 19th century. Under the warrantage system farmers, rather than selling their harvest at once, can use it as collateral to obtain credit from a bank.

Under the inventory credit system, the farmers can borrow from your bank against their harvests, which they can postpone selling when the price is low, when they are hungry for cash. For their crops, the farmers prefer your cash over somebody's check. The hungry sellers are the ones whom greedy middlemen take advantage of, and there are plenty of them at harvest time.

In the Niger project, started in 1999, in return for a bank loan the farmers left their produce in a locked warehouse with keys held by both the bank and their group. The credit gave the smallholders the means to buy essential inputs for the next planting and also allowed them to hold on to the produce until the lean season – when food stocks start to run low and prices climb.

At that point they redeemed their produce from the warehouse, sold their crop, repaid their loan and pocketed the difference. Using part of the credit to finance other income-generating activities, many farmers managed to repay the loans even before selling their crop.

With inventory credit, rice farmers don't have to sell their palay even if they don't have any money. They can survive, even thrive. Let's give them credit for that!

Borrowing from the FAO's warrantage version and the World Bank's concept of inclusive market-oriented enterprise, ICRISAT has come up with inclusive market-oriented development; I have written about it a great many times; for a beginning lesson, see my "An African Revolution. IMOD Power to the Women!" (22 September 2010, iCRiSAT Watch, blogspot.com). I will now quote myself from there:

(William) Dar said that the question is not to end hunger first but to end hunger and at the same time end poverty. The poor cannot have access to food if they cannot have access to cash. While he is feeding his family, the farmer must be able to raise cash to meet other necessities, and he can do that only if he becomes market-oriented.

Friday, 10 January 2014, in the village of Erfe in Santa Barbara, Pangasinan, in the morning our team of UMIC consultants – Butchoy Espino, Dormie del Carmen and I – held a training session on marketing with farmer beneficiaries of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR). With Dormie's prompting, the leaders of the DAR farmers of 3 multi-purpose coops – Atlas Mabuna, Banerle and Goliman – told us, in so many words, that they were helpless in the marketing of their produce as they had to submit to the machinations of the bookers, who were in cahoots with traders, who dictated the prices.

Since our consultancy called for training DAR rice and corn farmers to become decision-makers themselves, we did not tell them what we thought they should do, about the 20% and 40%, except to say they had options other than dealing with the traders.

I noted that not one of the DAR farmers thought of dealing with the situation not as individual producers but as a combined force, through their cooperative becoming the middleman and profiting from all the benefits added throughout the value chain. I was intently listening not only as one of the trainors but also as the General Manager of the Nagkaisa Multi-Purpose Cooperative – if you want to talk, you can visit us at the Danggay House, located right across the Senior Citizens Center at the plaza of my hometown of Asingan, Pangasinan. In truth, as GM myself, I have been thinking of the role of coops in poverty emancipation, as contrasted to poverty alleviation. Borrowing from the IMOD concept of ICRISAT in India and throwing in the devastation of Tacloban City in the Philippines by super typhoon Yolanda, I have come up with the concept of Yolanda Marketing (see "Yolanda Marketing. A Thanksgiving idea for millions," 29 November 2013, Nagkaisa, blogspot.com). I will now quote myself from there:

Early that same morning (28 November 2013), as General Manager of Nagkaisa, serendipity struck and I invented Yolanda Marketing, a construction inspired by the inclusive destruction wrought by Super Typhoon Yolanda in the Eastern Visayas, with the bright promise of overcoming total Yolanda Destruction by encouraging enlightened multi-purpose cooperatives to rise from the ashes.

Borrowing from the Super Typhoon, Yolanda Marketing is a Super Force. In my modified IMOD, I have proposed that the coops themselves become the vehicles to carry out inclusive market-oriented projects for their members. I call them "Super Coops" and I first proposed the idea at the end of October last year (see "The Super Coops of 2014," 30 October 2013, Nagkaisa, blogspot.com). With the Super Coops helping the rice farmers from one cropping season to another, from planting to marketing, the poor farmers can have their food security along with their income security. It's almost like having your cake and eating it too.

As an advocate of self-reliance for poor farmers and as General Manager of a coop in my rural hometown, I Coop Crusader am hereby challenging CGIAR to add the dimension of cooperativism to its research program packages:

Specifically for CGIAR to fund 150 Super Coops in 15 countries with $150 million as budget, in order to effect change beyond intensity of income and towards security of income of the poor farm families in Africa and Asia.

Granting $1 million each coop. Thus, my million-dollar challenge to CGIAR out of its billion-dollar budget calls for only 15% assistance, which can go a long, long way, from the semi-arid regions of Australia to Zimbabwe, with public-science-private partnerships happily helping the poor rice farmers help themselves rise from poverty – and stay up there.

In New Year 2014, will CGIAR be happy to coopt the poor in the drylands of the world?