SUMMARY REPORT

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Introduction

The main aim of this summary report is to analyse the current levels of cooperation amongst farming entrepreneurs in the COFARM partner countries and the EU. It seeks to provide information and raise awareness amongst stakeholders about the importance of co-operation amongst farming entrepreneurs.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Farm partnerships are the primary type of collaboration. Family farms in partnership operate together as larger entities and are managed and remain in the ownership of the cooperating families. They may be intra-familial or inter-familial;
  • Share farming involves two separate farming businesses on the same land without forming a partnership or company, and without any exchange of payment;
  • Share milking is a relatively new concept in Ireland that is being adopted from New Zealand. Typically, the land owner supplies land, infrastructure, and some cows. The share milker supplies the management skills, labour, and some more cows. Operating costs are split between the land owner and share farmer based on what each party brings to the arrangement and profits are shared in an agreed proportion;
  • Contract rearing is a similarly new concept in Ireland that has arisen out of the growth in the dairy sector and the corresponding limited land around milking facilities. A dairy farmer contracts another farmer to rear his/her replacement heifers on their land, thereby freeing up land around the milking facilities for the cows that are ready for milking;
  • Cow leasing is when a dairy farmer with excess cows leases those cows out to another farmer. This can be short-term (1-2 years) or long-term (4-5 years). Those cows on a short- term lease return to the owner whereas those on a longer term generally do not;
  • Private companies;
  • Long-term leasing is not strictly a collaborative approach, but it does allow the leasee to have security of tenure so that they can invest in the land;
  • Producer groups generally concern beef and lamb farmers and involve the famers coming together to sell their produce to meat processors. Selling in larger numbers can allow them to get a better price. Some producer groups are breed-specific.
  • Group purchasing of farm inputs

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Marketing cooperatives and producer groups. Some of these are highly professionalised, with international operations.

Additional collaboration

  • Teagasc (the Agriculture and Food Development Authority) has put significant efforts into promoting collaborative concepts and assisting with templates and agreements. This has included a series of video case studies which promote collaborative arrangements. There is a dedicated specialist working in Teagasc to promote the concept of collaboration and support farmers in this area. Training is being provided to farmers and professionals (e.g. accountants and solicitors) but resources are limited.
  • Macra na Feirme, the Irish Young Farmers Organisation has a Land Mobility Service which supports and encourages land mobility, including collaborative activities.

Barriers to collaboration

  • Mindset of farmers;
  • Attachment to land ownership;
  • Succession/inheritance issues;
  • Lack of information and advice;
  • Fears regarding CAP payments,
  • Worries about loss of control/insecurity;
  • Lack of experience in working with others;
  • Lack of business skills.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Sharing machinery;
  • Joint purchase of materials;
  • Members of the Club of Young Farmers, which is part of the Association of Private Farming, help each other with machinery and its storage, and with harvesting. If the harvest is finished sooner in the southern regions due to the climatic conditions, the farmers go to help their colleagues in the north.

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Sharing delivery for produce;
  • Common yard sales (e.g. farmers who have the means and space for yard sales help others and they sell in one place);
  • Joint sales of produce are becoming more popular, for instance through “box sales” in which consumers directly buy a box of produce put together by different farmers;
    Farmers’ markets;
  • The number of marketing cooperatives is slowly rising, particularly for dairy, fruits and vegetables.

Additional collaboration

  • Working together on economic issues;
  • Promoting farmers’ political goals;
  • Field trips, training, lectures and meetings are organized by the Association of Private Farmers.
  • The Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders, which is based on a club system, focus on collaboration based on exchanging contacts amongst farmers, discussing breeding issues, and producing manuals on how a particular breed should be treated and used.

Barriers to collaboration

  • Cooperation among farmers was affected by the communist regime (1948 – 1989). Historical factors can mean that Czech farmers are wary of formal cooperation. The desire to cooperate must come from the farmers themselves and the state leading such efforts may not be well regarded.
  • Agricultural cooperatives can be a sensitive subject. If farmers want to develop a new organization, it will more likely be a private limited company than a cooperative.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Multi-purpose agricultural cooperatives;
  • Machinery exchange associations;
  • Agrarian communities which manage the undivided land that is in common use.

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Multi-purpose and specialized cooperatives (e.g. fruit growing, forestry, and dairy; protected designation of origin, traditional specialties);
  • Processing cooperatives, particularly for meat, wine, and some dairy.

Additional collaboration

  • Associations are the most common means by which Slovenian farmers cooperate, such as the Association of Young Farmers and the Association of Animal Breeders. The main aims of these associations are networking, representation of members’ interests, and provision of training.
  • The Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry of Slovenia which represents the interests of Slovene agriculture, forestry and fishing at home and abroad.

Barriers to collaboration

  • Due to historical reasons, some Slovenian farmers can be distrustful of collaborative practices;
  • Worries about compromising and losing individuality.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Agrarian associations for production;
  • Supply cooperatives;
  • Cooperatives for common usage of the land (where the productive resources such as land and machinery are held in common by the cooperative);
  • Associated Work Cooperatives;
  • Cooperatives for the use of agricultural machinery
  • Leasing;
  • Sharecropping;
  • Irrigation communities;
  • Farm management groups (associations whose purpose is the provision of farm management services).

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Agrarian associations for product transformation;
  • Agrarian associations for agricultural marketing; Agricultural producer groups and organizations (cooperatives or associations with a special objective, such as origin certification).

Additional collaboration

  • Inter-professional associations (vertical integration);
  • Professional, trade union or representative associations (e.g. agricultural workers's unions);
  • Credit cooperatives (to finance the payment of labor and for investments).

Barriers to collaboration

  • Abandonment of rural areas by young people hiders the possibility of generational change;
  • Lack of specific training for professional managers of cooperative enterprises.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Sharing machinery;
  • Sharing manure;
  • Keeping a herd together;
  • Loose/coincidental cooperation.

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Some successful marketing approaches involving further processing.

Barriers to collaboration

  • Specific economic or business development situation;
  • Personal profile of farmers;
  • Personal reasons (going from “I” to “we”);
  • Finding a common basis or starting point;
  • Succession processes;
  • Becoming too big and then not having individual interests respected enough;
  • The entering and exiting of cooperators;
  • Reaching consensus about the quality of the work;
  • External consulting.

“Inside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Establishing a simplified limitied liability company is the basic way of formalising the relationship between the members of a family;
  • Little cooperatives (3-8 members) which tend to be aimed at a common production activity;
  • Cooperatives with 9+ members;
  • Consortiums of a large number of people;
  • In recent years, many social cooperatives have been founded that focus on social farming;
  • Provision of services e.g. supply of farm inputs and consultancy services. This is usually managed by processing cooperatives.

“Outside the farm gate” collaboration

  • Cooperation with storage and processing for some sectors, such as like crops, olive oil, and sheep cheese;
  • Not-for- profit consortiums for the management of protected denomination products;
  • Producer organisations in the fruit and vegetable sector, which have been legally encouraged through the Common Agricultural Policy since 2001. These promote a higher quality of products, encourage their members to adopt good environmental practices, and assist in the distribution and marketing of products.

Additional collaboration

  • Temporary associations that are set up for a specific project;
  • Social activities;
  • Services for farmers;
  • Enterprise networks which are new type of cooperation to be recognized in Italian legislation. These can either be profit seeking or not-for- profit.

Barriers to collaboration

  • Lack of management competencies;
  • Credibility issues;
  • Lack of adequate legislation to cover different types of cooperation;
  • Lack of a culture for cooperation amongst farmers.
  • Significant efforts by agricultural advisory services to develop and promote the concepts;
  • Recognition by Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (Ireland) of the potential of
    collaborative arrangements;
  • Improved the quality of life and incomes of those involved;
  • Facilitated growth and achievement of scale;
  • Improved efficiency and economies of scale (reduction in production costs; marketing;
    distribution);
  • Increased productivity for some farms which were in decline;
  • More options for new entrants to become established in farming;
  • Intergenerational and inter-farmer transfer of knowledge and experience;
  • Number of options for collaboration being explored and developed;
  • Social orientation;
  • Improvement in market access; and
  • Enables collective acquisition of equipment (machinery rings)
  • Lack of understanding among many farmers of the concepts and potential benefits;
  • Limited resources within state agencies to further develop and promote the concepts, deliver
    training and support those involved in collaborative activities;
  • Small number of non-familial co-operation / collaboration developed to date;
  • Disaffection of farmers towards the cooperative model, thereby leading to low participation
    (especially for former Communist states);
  • Lack of openness to change – traditional orientation;
  • Cooperative structures are mainly concerned with small farmers, thereby hampering the
    participation of medium to large-scale farmers;
  • Rules of cooperation not clearly defined – breach of rules;
  • Lack of consensus on common aims of cooperation; and
  • Limited legislation.
  • Significant potential for further growth in cooperation;
  • New structures being developed;
  • Expansion into the non-family and dry-stock sectors;
  • Potential to grow and prosper through political incentives & measures (rural development
    programme);
  • Enhanced professionalization (business management; technical operations; digital
    technologies);
  • Promotion of innovation and search of new markets (internationalization); and
  • Collaboration between cooperatives.
  • Traditional attachment to land ownership;
  • Predominance of short term renting;
  • Taxation supports favour leasing more than collaboration;
  • Statutory and regulatory bodies can be slow to respond to new structures;
  • Farmers may not be willing to engage in new arrangements;
  • Concerns regarding succession and involvement of the next generation;
  • Fear of failure;
  • Aversion to contracts and formal agreements;
  • Lack of information leading to misinformation;
  • Lack of educational and training structures; and qualifications for relevant stakeholders;
  • The poor management and image of some cooperatives, favour the substitution by private
    companies;
  • Poor rural development policies / strategies; and
  • Lack of participation, trust and cooperative spirit amongst some farming entrepreneurs.

A wide range of training and upskilling requirements can be identified across the range of cooperation activities in the different partner countries. Training is required by both farmers and the professionals who support and advise farmers. The main areas of training and upskilling required included:

  • Education on the potential opportunities and benefits of cooperation both for those engaged in cooperative activities and those who may be considering them;
  • Training on cooperative structures and functions and both the requirements and responsibilities of those who get involved in these structures – incorporating legal, economic, financial, administration, health and safety, marketing, technical and management aspects;
  • Understanding of collaborative farming models - focus on how collaboration works in practice: why they work; why they don’t work; number and type of arrangements in place. Principles and practices that make a collaborative farming arrangement work;
  • Legal and practical aspects of signing up to and adhering to cooperative agreements;
  • Time management: critically important when working with others;
  • Financial and cost management and control (long-term budgeting and cash flow management);
  • Leadership and corporate governance: for those who are taking on roles within cooperatives/businesses;
  • Entrepreneurialism: encouraging individuals to develop new enterprises and business opportunities;
  • People and relationship management skills: either as a partner in a larger business or as a manager, farmers are lacking people management skills;
  • Cooperative/collaborative skills and decision making: farmers have traditionally worked and made decisions on their own (or with family input) and therefore require training in the area of working with others and shared decision making;
  • Strategic planning skills;
  • Succession planning skills;
  • Stress management and well-being skills;
  • Communication skills;
  • Training for effective cooperation/collaboration;
  • Conflict management and resolution skills;
  • Approaches/practices to improve efficiency; and
  • Use of technology to improve efficiency.

One of the challenges in providing training to farmers is to get them to recognise the benefit of the training and to encourage them to participate. It was also highlighted that while online training may be more flexible for farmers, it will still be difficult to get them to engage with the training.

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
CO-FARM: Enhancing COoperation amongst FARMing entrepreneurs
Project Number: 2016-1-IE01-KA202-016870

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