Improving Institutional Capacity:
Strengthening Farmer Organizations in the OIC Member Countries
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5. Policy Recommendations for Strengthening FOs in OIC Member
Countries
Overall, the research found that the state of farmer organizations within the OIC is reasonably
strong, with a long tradition to build upon and generally appropriate supporting structures. As
in much of the rest of the world, however, there exist significant majorities of farmers in many
OIC states that are not yet belonging to and receiving the benefits of farmer organizations. In
light of this, the next step is to continue building the capacity of farmer organizations through
appropriate policies and targeted support actions. This concluding section presents policy
recommendations in two areas.
The first area relates to policy actions that can help address the common capacity gaps and
challenges faced by FOs (recall from Section hat these can be technical, institutional and
managerial, or political). Actions that OIC Member Countries could consider undertaking
include reaffirming the principle of farmer organization independence and autonomy from
government control; increasing spending for government extension, input support, and small-
scale infrastructure development with the goal of relieving some of the reported financial
burdens faced by FOs; and potentially encouraging market research into the design of FO-
targeted financing and banking products. It is also noted that a workshop could be held to
discuss the appropriate mandate and organizational structure for governmental bodies
dedicated to working with FOs, as these exist in many Member Countries and can be a source
of value for FOs.
The second area relates to opportunities for collaboration among member countries and
between member countries and multilateral organizations. Here, several opportunities are
noted, including the possibility of collaborating with the ILO on the inclusion of pro-farmer
organization Recommendation 193 principles (discussed in Section 4.3.2) into national policy;
the potential to collaborate with the FAO and national and regional statistical bodies to
enhance data collection on FO-related issues; and the possibility of organizing a cross-OIC
learning workshop where parties from one OIC region (such as the African group, where a
number of pro-FO policies have been implemented) may share their findings with parties from
other regions.
Full details of the recommendations are given below.
5.1. Policy measures to reduce the challenges inherent in organizing
farmers and encourage the strengthening of OIC Member Countries’
FO capacity
The strategies pursued by the international and regional FO-strengthening actors described in
Section 4.2, along with the institutional frameworks discussed in Section 4.3, together provide
the outlines of a framework for helping farmers organize into strong FOs. These strategies and
frameworks – especially ILO Recommendation 193, discussed below in Sectio – should be
considered a starting point for any OIC action to promote farmer organizations.
Sections and escribe how the enabling environment for farmer organizations
within the OIC is reasonably strong at a high level, with some specific challenges. One area of
note is the issue of government involvement in FOs. Research in Sectio eveals that 30%
of Arab and Asian group countries have an apex farmer organization that is linked to or
controlled by the government. Given that, as discussed in Section 4, independence and
autonomy are widely considered to be core enabling principles for strong FOs, as a first