A few minutes ago we said "till soon" to Bart de Steenhuijsen Piters of the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) from Amsterdam. Bart presented a short book on farmers as shareholders, presenting recent experiences of organic and fair trade producers that became shareholders in companies involved in the sale of their produce. Not as a cooperative, which Bart defined as a "Civil Society Organisation", but in a new or existing corporation / business. In the end, he concluded that two models of funding such ownership were the most appropriate:
1) A trust fund, where an external donor puts up the capital for the farmers' shares
2) A premium based model, where a little share of the value of the consumer-end-product is returned via a separate mechanism to the group/organisation holding the shares.

The main issues to be resolved through share-holder farmers are influence over and transparency of the chain, as a shareholder gets information. For this purpose a relatively small share will do, and will be relatively cheap.
However, often a much bigger share is bought by donor agencies, where they also want to be represemted on the board of the company. Exerting influence on this level requires good knowledge and business insights, which donors or farmer umbrella organisations often don't have.

ICCO staff contributed to the discussion with examples from Peru, Paraguay and Mali.

The presentation can be downloaded here (soon!)

The book is still available at the Royal Tropical Institute, in print, or electronically. Please click!

KIT is presently working on a comparable publication on Producer Organisations.