What common denominator brought a mechanical engineer from India and a bank credit analyst from Thailand and a cotton researcher from Egypt to the same course? A world-wide phenomenon: Migration of rural populations to the city and the crisis in family farming. The subject of the course: peri-urban agriculture - semi-rural projects designed to enhance income and keep the next generation on the farm.
MASHAV's and CINADCO's 3rd month-long course in "Agribusiness for Rural & Peri-Urban Development," that convened in mid-November 2001 in Kibbutz Shefayim north of Tel Aviv, confronts this problem. Israel's experience in peri-urban agriculture is not tied to answering the challenge of a semi-arid climate or expertise with this or that particular crop. It is the result of Israel's whole geography: The fact that the entire State of Israel is so small that, in essence, most Israeli farmers are situated in proximity to urban areas. The competition on lands for non-agricultural real estate uses is leading to the encroachment on farmlands that hitherto were cultivated over centuries. This has led to the enhancement of protected (greenhouse) agriculture to include rational, hi tech, controlled irrigation and integrated pest management.
The decline in the profitability of small farms world-wide has led Israeli farmers as well to nurture a host of agricultural-based entrepreneurship - or peri-urban agriculture. Such operations, including small-scale processing plants such as family-run dairies that produce upscale cheeses or organic milk products and rural bed & breakfast accommodations fueled by various forms of adventure tourism, ethnic tourism and agrotourism, are all designed to enhance income among farmers.
The course not only brought together individuals from 21 different countries including Honduras, China, The Gambia, Slovakia and The Philippines, to mention but a few. In addition to geography, the group was equally diverse in terms of professional background. Among the 28 participants this year were academics who teach agribusiness and engage in agricultural research, agricultural analysts in government and members of NGO planning teams, extension specialists working literally at the grass roots, managers of agricultural or rural development trusts and foundations. What was the common denominator that brought both a mechanical engineer, a veterinarian, and two senior bank staff members to the same course? A world-wide phenomenon: The migration of rural populations to the city and the crisis in family farming.
Through lectures and field trips, the course material designed to help fight unchecked urbanization introduced participants to a host of successful enterprises that have been launched by Israeli farmers as answers to the crisis in family farming. Along with this, participants were given a first-hand look at Israel's marketing infrastructure that moves products from the farm to processing plants or to wholesale markets in the city and produce boards that attempt to help farmers make informed decisions of what to raise and when to sell based on up-to-date data on prices, trends, acreage, etc. In order to allow graduates to apply and adapt what they have seen to conditions and resources in their own country, the course puts a strong emphasis on the organizational and economic side of peri-urban agricultural enterprises. These entrepreneurial skills include such things as how to formulate a business plan, management tools such as the basics of costing and capital budgeting and introduction to flow charts, and concepts such as the art of selling and the art of negotiations.
What brought graduates to Israel? What field are they in and what problems have they faced? What in the course was particularly germane to their work? And how will they implement what they learned and saw when they get home? Interviews with eight of the participants - some from places smaller than Israel such as Bhutan, some from places like Kenya where the State of Israel could fit into a medium-size national park - reflect just how multi-faceted peri-urban agriculture can be, while underscoring just how common problems surrounding urbanization are.
Jonas Tchakoa, head of the agribusiness department at the University of Dschang in Cameroon, teaches subjects such as farm management and resource allocation. Cameroon faces a serious problem of rural populations migrating to the cities. "'Going to Yaounde' has become the dream of many rural youth and today 30% of the population live in or around Cameroon's two major urban centers - Yaounde (the capital) and Douala," says Tchakoa. Both in his own education - at Tufts in Massachusetts in the USA and then in Nigeria and Cameroon for his graduate work economics and management studies - and in teaching at his University things are very theoretical, but if his department is to have more impact on the farm community it is important to put more emphasis on practical skills in their teaching, he says. Among the subjects he found most useful from this standpoint were lectures in the art of negotiation, which included actual role-playing, not just discussion of dynamics in terms of models. In Israel he found the layered and integrated structure of marketing - including national growers' boards that provide growers with a flow of information about past seasons (acreage, demand, prices, etc.) so farmers can plan future crops very thought-provoking.
In fact, the concept of a wholesale distribution center where farmers can market their projects rather than dealing directly with the consumer or the small greengrocer and how farmers in villages in Israel organize to transport their products to markets and enhance smooth marketing and optimum prices was mentioned by many graduates as a surprise.
Aderoju (Ade) Odunsi, the secretary general of the Nigeria Integrated Rural Accelerated Development Organization (NIRADO), explained why, noting that in Africa today, 50% of the fruits and cereal crops never reach the consumer because of poor post-harvest treatment, lack of a transportation and marketing infrastructure. The organization she heads is an NGO that seeks to serve as a catalyst for empowering villages through self-help programs and local leadership development in areas such as health, education and agriculture, she explained. Odunsi, an expert in facilitator training, has a keen interest in adoption of more effective processing and marketing techniques among farmers. One of the projects NIRADO hopes to establish is machinery that will allow farmers in the Osun States to process cassava and turning them into dried chips - thus allowing them to sell their crops off-season when prices are higher. "The application of integrated food processing as we saw in Israel can impact favorably on the status of women," she explained. "Often it is the men who go to the city to seek work, while the women tend to the farm. In most cases, because of impediments such as poor roads, they sell their products at the farm gate for whatever they can fetch." Processing of mangos and pineapple and hibiscus flowers used for juice - could allow them to enhance the value of their products.
The field trips in particular provided a form of reference, she says: "Exposure to the concept of enhancing products through processing, packaging, the structure of wholesale marketing and how an export body like AGREXCO (Israel's agricultural export company) operates classifies what the goals must be if the ultimate goal is to export. But even 'as is' marketing concepts can be shared with farmers. They must learn to think in terms of 'what the customer wants', not 'what crop I happen to have to sell,'" Odunsi concluded.
Richard O. Okuno, a graduate of business administration from Kenya with a Master's degree in agricultural economics from the Philippines, worked in the past for the international refugee organization CARE. Today, he is a lecturer at Egerton University - an agricultural college in Kenya. While he is well-versed in business in general, Okuno says he viewed the peri-urban agriculture course as an opportunity to enrich his knowledge by exposure to the Israeli experience at the urging of a colleague who had attended a course in aquaculture.
"I intend to write a paper and conduct a seminar on the input I received. Our viewpoint has always been focused on production, and not enough has been invested in the marketing side of agriculture. As a result there have been surpluses and waste of valuable resources and energy," he says. "I think we have to change our approach to sustainable farming - that is, to create a market, to produce what will sell."
Okuno was particularly impressed by the concept of remote and romantic locations in Kenya having tourism potential for locals, not just international safari operations and hotel chains. Among the ideas he believes should be investigated when he returns to Kenya is the feasibility of community-based agrotourism among the Masai who inhabit the Great Rift Valley - a tribe whose way of life has been based on herd culture.
Bolou Ulita Rakuita, an agronomist with a B.Sc. from Australia, worked as an agricultural officer with the Fiji Ministry of Agriculture in animal production. Recently she was appointed to a national planning position at the Ministry of National Planning. In her previous capacity Rakuita had dealt primarily with enhancing dairy production in the central and eastern regions of Fiji. Fiji still imports 85% of its dairy products and milk is limited to imported powdered milk. Of Fiji's 770,000 inhabitants, about 70% are rural and 30% urban, but ratios are shifting toward 60:40, says Rakuita. While her training has prepared her to deal with animal nutrition, one of the biggest problem facing Fiji agriculture in the psychosocial realm: "Farmers do not think of animal production in terms of a business, as an economic operation. It is a way of life. Thus, it is customary to bring an animal to the home in mourning of a close family member. The economic price of such a gift or the impact on one's livestock - it could even be one of three or five sows a family owns - is dwarfed by the pressure of social expectations," she noted. Rakuita says a new way of thinking will be required that will "put money value before the value of social relationships."
A change of heart will also be necessary in learning the art of selling that will be customer-oriented - even under the present marketing conditions. "There are a lot of management skills that we can pass on to extension officers who can then teach farmers - techniques such as greeting a customer, having a welcoming attitude toward the customer." She was particularly taken by the visit to Ramat Naftali, in northern Israel, where farmers have integrated rural tourism with farming. The idea that a rural setting may be an asset is something she hopes to pass on to others, including her own family who have a 100-acre section of land an hour from the city that might be suited for tourist bungalows. Like many of the graduates, she was deeply affected by the system of wholesale markets where each farmer "doesn't have to 'waste time' going with his products to the market and waiting for a buyer."
Nothando Sithole, an agricultural economist from Zimbabwe, is a Ministry of Agriculture extension specialist with AGRITEX. She did her undergraduate work at London University, and holds a Master's degree from the University of Zimbawe. Sithole's main area of expertise is socioeconomic appraisal and project evaluation for the head office of the MoA. "I assess whether project members will benefit from the project economically, and whether society will gain - and subsequently, what knowledge can be passed on to a wider circle - decision-makers, extension staff and farmers. We evaluate a host of areas - from irrigation and grazing schemes to radio programming," she explains. Her office also does costing estimates - inputs, yields and income - for small growers with 3-5 hectare farms.
"One of the things that impressed me the most was the amount of support from the government that small farmers enjoy - in term of good roads with access to sections farmed by small-holders, and the services supplied by marketing boards," she says. Sithole believes that it is feasible to provide Zimbabwe farms with some of the information Israeli farmers take for granted - such as total acreage under production, costs and budgets, market trends over several years and predictions for the next season in time for farmers to make informed decisions for the next year. "While we don't have widespread access to Internet or cell phones yet, it is possible to provide the same kind of information via the radio - with prices on a daily basis so farmers in Zimbabwe could make decisions about where to sell, when to sell and what to sell and even what to produce."
"It is important to show agriculture can be a going business to keep people from flowing to the cities in search of jobs. I believe if there was a network of local wholesale marketing centers such as in Israel - rather than individual farmers having to travel 200 km. to the city to sell their products - it would do much to enhance the situation," she concluded. This can be applied to solar-drying and packaging of grapes as raisins, cabbage and onions, for instance.
Anand Kamath, a mechanical engineer by training, works as an extension officer for the Krishna Valley Advanced Agriculture Foundation in India. The Indian NGO seeks to provide farmers living in a 20 km. radius of Sangli - a city of 1.2 m people in Maharashtra on the west coast of India - with basic technologies to make small farms into going concerns. One of the strategies for keeping the offspring from leaving the farm for the city is introduction of intensive agriculture - primarily greenhouse technologies in lieu of traditional crops such as sugar cane which requires more land and depletes the soil.
The Foundation - underwritten by prosperous agrobusiness people in the area and with 1,200 farmers who pay a nominal membership fee - has a successful pilot project of demonstration plots. The engineering unit of which he is a member has helped 25 farmers establish 500 sq. meter greenhouses of their own - at cost, some based on adaptation of Israeli technologies. "We've used bamboo rather than more expensive materials to build the structure in areas where there is no danger of wind. Now that there is locally-produced plastic, the cost had come down significantly." This is the reason Kamath came to the course: to gain the business and planning skills necessary to upscale the project to allow farmer-members of the NGO the option of growing high yield-high income off-season crops such as tomatoes and flowers. The government and his NGO are jointly planning a 226 hectare cooperative 'agropark' for the children of farmers, for growing fruits and vegetables for the national and export market - which will include training centers and processing and cold storage facilities and an airstrip
Luis Ricardo Felix, from Ecuador, an agronomist with a MBA, is the farm administration manager of Jardines Piaveri Cia Ltd. - an 80 hectare greenhouse rose complex, and export-quality broccoli-growing operation 90 km. from the capital of Quito. "Despite the size of our farm, we haven't had any systematic information management system - such as analysis of sales over the years and market trends and so forth," he says. One of the things that Felix found particularly useful was farm management computer software that will help him introduce this kind of planning and information management both for the farm itself and national flower marketing which the farm conducts.
Tashi Dhendup, a government veterinarian from Bhutan, a tiny independent monarchy of 600,000 inhabitants in Asia between China and India, was engaged in breeding programs to improve the genetic stock of dairy and beef farmers in his country prior to coming to the peri-urban agriculture course. Ninety-percent of Bhutan's population is still engaged in farming, but migration of young people from rural areas to the city is beginning to be felt in Bhutan - and with it unemployment and other signs of social dislocation, says Dhendup. To stem this new phenomena, the government plans to establish a pilot project in Barbesa, a rural village about 5 km. from the capital city of Thimphu designed to make farming more attractive to young people. The pilot - which will encompass 30 families and focuses on establishing a model dairy designed to provide fresh milk to the city - will be part of the country's 9th Five-Year Plan.
"Most farmers today have 25 hectare farms and engage in mixed farming of cattle and crops such as maize, rice and wheat, as well as harvesting timber used for firewood and construction, he says. "Today farmers in Barbesa have an average of 3 dairy cows each, and turn most of their milk into milk products such as cheeses and butter that they sell in a haphazard manner in a weekend farmers' market in the city." There is no systemized marketing setup to date, although geographically the area is ideal for peri-urban agricultural development - particularly dairies that can provide fresh milk to the capital's 70,000 residents.
The idea is to organize the Barbesa farmers into an agricultural cooperative for processing the milk, where co-op members will collect, chill and pasteurize the milk, transporting it collectively to the city to regular customers. "I had studied animal medicine, not business or economics, and therefore I wanted to attend this course to gain the planning and management skills needed to launch this project. But the same marketing orientation taught in the course can be taught to all farmers, he adds. "Today, farmers don't give enough thought to market demand in planning their crops," Dhendup said ruefully.
He added in closing that he was surprised how tranquil the country was compared to media reports that had discouraged some of his colleagues from coming to Israel at this time. Dhendup admitted that he was also surprised how developed Israel is. "The fact that Israel began as a developing country is a source of encouragement for other small countries that 'making it' is possible."
Director of Training at CINADCO Abraham Edery adds that this course subject was introduced two years ago to CINADCO's training programs dealing with agribusiness as an essential element in today's economy together with peri-urban development due to the ever-changing trends in today's society.