Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries
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Keys to CACVRA’s success and lessons for other environments
While participation in the Fair Trade scheme has apparently been successful for CACVRA, the
scheme itself should not be viewed as a panacea or a general policy recommendation. A
broader discussion of the impact of Fair Trade is beyond the scope of this paper but it is
important to note that many objections to Fair Trade can be found in the literature, where
outside observers note that in some cases, participating organizations are not able to sell all of
their produce through the scheme despite incurring significant certification costs, and that, in
general, only a limited amount of the retail “Fair Trade” markup may actually reach the
primary producers.120
The issue of Fair Trade aside, however, some lessons from CACVRA seem broadly applicable:
 Continuously increasing the quality of production and the share of value captured is an
important goal for organizations that hope to make a significant and sustainable
impact on members’ livelihoods. This is especially true in the context of liberalized
global markets where commodity price fluctuations are no longer absorbed by
governments.
 Diversification may also be an important strategy for small-scale cooperatives in the
context of liberalized markets – but organizations may need support in diversifying. In
CACVRA’s case, for example, Pronatec, a German trader of specialty organic goods,
provided technical assistance to the organization as it sought to diversify into Fair
Trade cocoa in the early 2000s.
 Agricultural co-operatives face significant challenges in post-conflict situations but
supporting them through the immediate post-conflict period can help repair the social
and economic fabric of a region.
120 For a concise summary of the objections, see Griffiths, Peter, “Ethical objections to Fairtrade,” Journal of Business Ethics
July 2011.