Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries
1
Executive Summary
Agriculture is an important contributor to national economic growth in the member
countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). In total, approximately 54% of
the OIC population lives in rural areas; many engage in agricultural livelihoods, contributing to
national food security and broad-based income generation1. Given agriculture’s prominent
economic role, understanding how the industry is organized is an important step in
formulating effective policy. Most agricultural industries in emerging economies include
farmer organizations (FOs), which can enable farmers to realize economic benefits that they
would not otherwise achieve alone. However, given that low FO membership rates can
potentially create adverse effects on member countries’ agricultural productivity, this study
has been conducted to understand the current strength of farmer organizations within
the OIC and to develop recommendations for continuing to strengthen them. This study
involved cross-country data-gathering (desk research) on publicly-available policy documents
in 51 of 57 OIC countries, supplemented by visits to four countries (Senegal, Morocco, Uganda,
and Indonesia) to create in-depth profiles of five farmer organizations.
Well-functioning FOs provide a number of benefits 2,3. By intervening in various stages of
the agricultural value chain, from the input and primary production stage all the way through
processing and value addition, they allow groups of producers to improve their bargaining
power in the market, reduce costs, and capture a larger share of the final value of agricultural
production. They do this by pooling capital and resources through cooperative enterprises, so
that by working together, each farmer can have access to services, markets, and inputs that
they would not be able to access on their own.
FOs are typically thought of as providing services across four areas: Access to agricultural
inputs (to increase production and lower the costs of farming), Access to logistics services
(to improve quality and raise the market value of members’ production), Access to markets
(to help farmers improve their collective bargaining power with large buyers and tap new
buyers, such as export markets), and Policy advocacy (to ensure that government policies and
development programs are designed to benefit members and other small-scale farmers). The
end result of these services is, when all works well, improved agricultural incomes (through
increased sales volumes and higher prices) – and thus livelihoods – for small-scale farmers
and their families.
The ability of farmer organizations across the world, including within the OIC, to deliver
on the abovementioned benefits is frequently inhibited by two broad types of
challenges:
 Participatory challenges: Low participation rates in FOs, which are frequently observed
in OIC member countries (as in other countries across the world), are often due to three
significant factors: the vulnerability of FOs to state intervention for political gain, the
exclusion of smallholder farmers and women from FO governance activities and the
perception that farmer organization management is ineffective or unaccountable to its
members.
1 COMCEC Coordination Office, “Improving Institutional Capacity: Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member
Countries”, Project TOR. Based on latest available statistics (2011).
2 Stockbridge, David, et al., “Farmer Organizations for Market Access: An International Review”, 2003
3 UN Food and Agriculture Organization, “Agricultural Cooperatives: Key To Feeding The World”, 2012