Improving Institutional Capacity:

Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries

Figure 4: Estimated share of farmers (or farm labor force) belonging to farmer organizations

or rural co-operatives

Regional trends are difficult to state with any confidence, due to the small sample size but it is

noteworthy that the mean share of farmers in FOs is lower in the Arab Group, at

22%,

37%

for the African and Asian Groups, although this masks an extremely wide range of outcomes

within regions (as shown above).

As noted above, this type of information is not tracked globally by any organization, so

comparisons between the OIC and other parts of the world are difficult. However, it is possible

to compare the OIC average with some other representative countries that have significant

agricultural sectors. The figure below presents data from seven non-OIC countries of various

income levels and demonstrates that, on average, the OIC is well-positioned in terms of the

strength of farmer organizations in its member states. However, as discussed below, the lack of

readily-available, standardized data in both the OIC and in other countries means that it is not

possible to definitively state how the OIC compares to the world average.

Data are drawn from a variety of in-country sources - most commonly the national Ministry of Agriculture or leading

universities - and international publications – most commonly the ILO’s Country Reports, the Food and Agriculture

Organization (FAO), AgriTerra, and the World Bank - and reflect the most recent available information, generally from the

past 10 years. However, some data points are older and thus estimates of share of farmers belonging to FOs may be biased

downwards due to population growth. Full notes and calculations by country, and the sources used for the statistics, are

given i

hroug

n Annex 1.2