Many capitalizations of experiences of agricultural producers’ organizations were capitalized by Interréseaux and the CTA within the framework of the Working group “POs and commercialization”. These case studies show that there is a great diversity of activities which are undertaken by POs to improve access to markets and to better commercialize their agricultural products:
1) individual sales carried out by producers;
2) collective actions undertaken by producers once the agricultural products are produced, in order to better sell out their products;
3) collective actions realized by producers upstream of the market so as to have a mastery of production (quality and quantity) and the costs involved;
4) collective actions carried out by producers in order to organize markets in general as a means to have better sales conditions;
5) collective actions undertaken by producers in collaboration with other actors in the value chains as well as those involved in the development of sectoral policies.
The different aspects pertaining to the various types of actions are presented here by laying emphasis on the challenges and difficulties during their putting in place.
Cross cutting lessons derived from the various types of commercialization activities carried out by the POs are also presented in the conclusion. They illustrate that there is no miracle recipe: the experiences of POs are full of findings and lessons, with a host of possible activities, some of them traditional (purchase-sales), others on the regulation of markets (respect of rules, transparency…), regulation of supply, regulation of prices, alliances with other actors (intermediaries)…
The idea is not to give solutions or models of “best practices”, but to raise questions which members, PO technicians or personnel of support organizations can pose to ensure that the PO does not engage in the wrong activity which is impossible to manage and/or too risky!
