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.

Organic Business Guide launched!

Over the past 9 months we worked on the ambitious project of elaborating an Organic Business Guide. It is a joint project of Helvetas, Agro Eco Louis Bolk Institute, ICCO and IFOAM, with support from ICCO, SECO, UNEP and SIDA. Numerous people from other organisations also contributed in some way or the other to the book.

We are now happy to present you the result of this work. Print copies will be launched during Biofach at the following occasions, to which you are most welcome:
Tue 16.2.: IFOAM Trade Symposium
Thu 18.2.: Organic Night, receptions at the IFOAM stall (18.00h) and African Pavillion (20.00h)
Fri 19.2.: Organic Africa Symposium (11.00h)

Thereafter, print copies can be ordered from http://shop.ifoam.org/bookstore. The pdf version will also be available for free download from there. We will send you the agreed free copies after Biofach. In case you are at Biofach, please let me know, so that we can hand over the copies there. If we miss each other at Biofach, please pick up your copies from the IFOAM booth.

Maybe when reading the document you find that some aspects could be elaborated further, or additional examples or tools come to your mind that you think should be included? No problem! We also set up an interactive wikibook-version at http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Business_Guide. You can edit the book there and thus further develop it.

The French edition is in preparation and should be ready by mid March.

Now we need your support in making the book widely known among the target groups. You could for example:
Mention the book at your website, with a link to the IFOAM bookstore and to the wikibook
Inform your network about the book by e-mail or include it in your newsletters
Mention the book in presentations (e.g. using the attached slide)
Distribute copies of the book among the target groups (let us know in case you require additional copies, against shipping costs)

We want to use this occasion to wholeheartedly thank all of you who contributed to this project. A special thanks to ICCO, SECO, UNEP and SIDA for their generous support.
And of course we are looking forward to receiving your feedback!

Best regards,

Frank Eyhorn
Helvetas Organic & Fairtrade Competence Centre

and

Bo van Elzakker
Agro Eco Louis Bolk Institute

Eline received the report of the conference last October 29, see blogpost of Decmeber 18.
Here you find the report

Do Entrepreneurs need support?

By Eline Poels
On Thursday, October 29th I took part in the Entrepreneurship Development Conference in Rotterdam. Presented by SPARK, Triodos Facet and INHolland Rotterdam. Central question: Do Entrepreneurs need support? An interesting day with many participants, including our partner BSC Armenian claims, including charming and inspiring leadership of Samvel Gevorgyan. Below some provocative statements that I've recorded during the day, as food for thought, and links to the presentations on the website for a more complete picture.

In brief: Business plans are not sacred, entrepreneurs do not need help, failure is an option (A lesson for donors?!)

Alan Gibb, Chairman of the Foundation for SME Development at Durham University (UK) Presentation
* Give meaning to experience: that is the challenge of working with entrepreneurs.
* China grew so quickly due to big number of entrepreneurs; without enabling environment.
* Business Plan: good to get money from banks, but it is NOT the heart of a business.

Mistakes in working with (foreign) entrepreneurs until now:
* We did not fully appreciate where and how entrepreneurs learn as learning organisation
* The neglect of know who
* Neglect of emotions in learning
* Lack of empathy with ways small enterprises do, feel, organise, communicate, think and learn.

Needed:
* Adapt language to entrepreneurs
* Managing interdependency amidst day to day uncertainty.
* Not market planning. Teach how to.
* Vocational colleges for small business design.

Nils de Witte, Director Business in Development Network. Presentation
* To breed entrepreneurs you need entrepreneurs (peer networking)
* Entrepreneurship is not a science. You can’t tell entrepreneurs what to do, need to make own choices.
* They only need some guidance. AID does not do the trick
* Most successful businesses start in times of crisis.
* Until now, business incubators have not shown any changes on macro level.

Danny Melic, 2009 Dutch best entrepreneur under 25 years. Presentation
* Meeting other entrepreneurs, instead of attending (another) Business Plan training.
* It is not about the Plan, it is about planning
* Entrepreneurship is a Way of Life
* Help is not appreciated by entrepreneurs. At maximum: facilitation.
* A Safety-net is important

Paul Iske, Institute of Brilliant Failures, Dialogues ABN AMRO. Presentation
* Remove barriers for enterprises. Biggest barrier: fear.
* Climate for innovation & entrepreneurship
* Keywords: Diversity; Selection; Perpetuation; Co-evaluation; Unlearning Disruption Simplicity; Spare capacity; Timing
* Pace of learning should exceed rate of change.

Some loose remarks made during workshops:
* 2nd loop learning: knowledge of experience not used when partners are afraid to share mistakes with donors.
* All entrepreneurs are incomplete, you can not do everything alone. Need support to do things they can not.
* An entrepreneur is selfless: not looking for financial rewards (that is the right motivation).
* Important in re-emerging countries: how to deal with the survived companies instead of starting new ones.

ILEIA verlegt aandacht naar Family Farming en presenteert nieuw Magazine: Farming Matters

Last Tuesday I visited the 25th anniversary of ILEIA, which they celebrated with a conference in The Hague. Edth van Walsum, presented a new focus for ILEIA: More social and economic (so less focus on agricultural production technology), more policy change oriented (instead of internal networking amongst like minded professionals) and with a focus on family farming. Furthermore, Mrs. Van Walsum told the audience that more and more the international edition is filled with articles generated in the 9 regional editions.
In the end of the day, ILEIA presented the nee lay out and set-up of it's magazine, which is from now on: Farming Matters.

The crisis as an opportunity

Last week I visited, an expertmeeting called by the smallest coalition party of our present government, the "Christen Unie".
In the meeting, a group of young christian professionals in development-cooperation, fair trade and environment, that call themselve "the aid an trade guild", presented 3 key issues from their Momentum Manifesto. (a) Fiscal and monetary valueing of social and ecological values
(b) North-South and BRIC (Brasil, Russia, India, China: How to stop the south-north net transfers and (c) Production, Trade and Social Responsibility.

It was an interesting mix of participants, young and old orthodox protestants (CU members and officals or representatives at provincial or municipal levels), the young signatories of the manifesto, and high level representatives from trade unions, private sector umbrella's and academe.

In the third workshop that I attended, we discussed the issues 4, 5 and 6 of the manifesto: (4) Chain-responsibility, (5) Transparancy on the whole chain and (6) government's role in regulating the market (Market Master).

It was interesting to see how the official representatives of larger bodies tried to position: The private sector refers to the European Union for issues of "fair competition", which led the labour union to reply "there your representatives prevent any steps in this direction".

I pressed for the inclusion of more sectors and products in initiatives such as IDH / (Dutch) Initiative for Sustainable Trade . In my view, creating a bottom-line in the market regarding sustainability is a multi-stakeholder process, where the innovators should get a premium, and after a certain period (7 years) the late-comers should be forced to comply.

Once the minutes of the meeting are ready, we may take initiatives towards other political parties and meanwhile we will stay in touch with the Aid & Trade Guild.

Writeshop on Value Chain Development Programmes

By Angelica Senders

Since the re-organization in 2007, when the SFED department was created, we made a great leap in the development of SFED programmes all over the world. Now, three years later it is time to look back and foreword.

What have we achieved? What are our successes, what difficulties did we face? What are the challenges for the future? Which possible directions to take?

In order to make this analysis and translate them into recommendations, we will organize a workshop on value chain development programmes.

The workshop will have the character of a writeshop. Lessons learned as well as recommendations will be recorded and put on a wiki during the workshop.

Participants
ICCO staff directly involved in Value Chain Development Programmes of ICCO (GO staff as well as programme advisors and facilitators in the South).

When and where
Date: 2-3 December 2009
Place: The Netherlands, Stay Okay Bunnik

More information
• Outline of the workshop