Cooperatives play a significant role in addressing these success factors and by doing so family farmers can have bargaining power and maximized their share of the value added, hence having a large market share for cooperatives in a region can increase the price level and reduce volatility.  Cooperatives are important for reducing the risk of receiving payment for the deliveries and also adapting technologies that would address climate change. The type of cooperatives in managing these risks depends largely on a given context and how to motivates farmer to join and organize cooperatives but many cooperatives have expanded their activities in downstream stages of the food chain, strengthening their consumer orientation and promoting other farmers’ interests.

For this theme, a 2-hour session is designed in such a way that farmers’ organizations and agriculture cooperatives themselves, and their national networks will take the driver’s seat in sharing their experiences on the key issues and challenges affecting them. They will also have an avenue to share their initiatives or game changing solutions that were able to address these challenges in participating in value chain development hence enhancing access to markets.

Objectives

At the end of the session, participants will be able to:

1. Inform, educate, and learn about the issues and challenges of the challenges facing family farmers in accessing markets in local and global value chains;
2. Identify other innovative and game changing solutions that address these key issues and challenges;
3. Propose specific recommendations including how stakeholders can work and connect together on game changing solutions and increase market power of family farmers specially in the COVID 19 crisis.