Building Farmers Owned Company and Linking it to International Fashion Houses Under Fair Trade Arrangements

Lanting H¹*, Mensink J²

1. ETC International Group, Leusden, The Netherlands, Europe
2. Solidaridad, Utrecht, The Netherlands, Europe

In India, notably Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, an organic farmers’ producer company -aimed to have in 2011 between 10 and 20 thousand small and marginal cotton farmers as member – is in the process of development since February 2004. This producers’ company is build on farmers’ groups (about 20 members) and will be established and owned by Mutually Aided Co-operative Societies (about 500 members), which have clusters of farmers’ groups as their members (about 24 Farmers Groups).

The self financed farmers’ producer company will have a training unit, a marketing unit and a credit unit. It will trade in organic cotton and other organic products. The trainers of the training unit will be farmers who get special training for this purpose (about three weeks per year over a three year period) and who participated in a season long FFS (Farmers Field School, 20 sessions of 4 hrs) and Participatory Technology Development (PTD) program. Credit will be mobilized from banking sector and lend on to Farmers’ Groups. Agricultural products are certified organic and fair trade. The products are bought at a premium. Cotton will be used by Made By –a fair trade label- in which a number of fashion houses participate. They sell clothes that are, partially, made using fair trade and organic cotton.

The used methodology, of farmers organization and training, establishing forward and backward linkages with alternative input suppliers, banks, research and traders, has been developed over a 10 year period in practice in India

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