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Argentina, a middle-income country, is the third largest producer and second largest exporter of agricultural products in Latin America. But for people living in the country’s remote rural areas there are few opportunities to reap the benefits of this thriving sector. Two IFAD-supported projects in the northeast and northwest regions have worked to help small producers form strong cooperatives to obtain better access to credit and technical assistance and find new markets for their products. With more options at home, fewer young people are migrating to cities in search of work. 

Bees are a booming business for the Bee-keepers’ Association of Ibarre?a, thanks to an IFAD-funded programme Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

Honey is especially sweet for Carlos Dimitruk, a small-scale bee-keeper in Argentina’s Formosa province. He remembers eating it straight from his family’s two beehives when he was a child. And he has made honey production his life work.

“I have loved bees ever since I was a boy,” says Dimitruk. “That is why I decided to become a bee-keeper.” He bought 10 hives, but could not produce and sell enough honey to feed his family, so he   had to look for other employment on the side. He spent several   years harvesting grain, sorghum, soy and maize at a cooperative. At one time he had a motorcycle repair shop. But his thoughts always returned to bees.

“I saw that he was not happy doing those other jobs, and he was always tense and angry,” says his wife Mabel Sandoval. “I told him, ‘Until you are working in the fields with your own bees you won’t be happy.’”

Learning from the bees

Watching how bees work together for a common purpose gave bee-keeper Carlos Dimitruk the idea of forming a cooperative Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

Dimitruk knew that in order to make a living from bee-keeping he would have to increase his production, and he needed credit to buy more hives and inputs.

“One day I realized that the bees were showing me how to succeed by the efficient way they organized their hives,” he says. “I knew  we needed to organize, we needed to group together to sell, to buy inputs and to improve production quality. I thought that if each one of us involved in bee-keeping would contribute his or her skills and labour, we could create an efficient production system.”

That was the beginning of the Bee-keepers’ Association of Ibarre?a, which started out with 25 small-scale producers. Financing and technical assistance came from the Rural Development Project for the North-Eastern Provinces (PRODERNEA), which was active in the provinces of Chaco, Corrientes, Formosa and Misiones from 1999 to 2007.

Working together brings results

Carlos Dimitruk Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

PRODERNEA provided the bee-keepers’ association with financing to expand production to 1,000 hives and to renovate an old house that was transformed into a honey extraction room.

“Building the extraction room was a turning point in our association,” says Dimitruk. “That is what enabled us to improve quality and increase production. From that time on, customers started coming to buy our honey from all over the country, and even from Europe.”

By 2006 the association had 4,000 hives, and the number of producers had grown significantly. In 2006 the association had a turnover of US$113,500, and in 2007 turnover reached US$140,000.

“The amount could have been bigger if the weather conditions had been better,” Dimitruk says. “Looking at the landscape, all covered with flowers, makes me think that the 2008 crop will be a good one.”

“Each member has a specialization and everybody is responsible for something, just like in a beehive,” Dimitruk says. “Our idea is to have many producers with just a few hives, rather than to try for high production volumes. What we want is for bee-keeping to be an activity for the whole community, with opportunities for everyone, especially young people.”

Sustainable opportunities for future generations

“Our 12-year-old son is already learning through the association how to be a bee-keeper,” says Sandoval. “He is responsible for taking care of a few hives on his own. He is learning how to manage them and produce good quality honey that we can sell. That way he can save money for later, for his studies.”

Dimitruk adds that there have been a lot of changes, and not only in terms of money. Bee-keeping has improved the quality of life for his family as well as for others in the community. The bees have helped conserve the environment and the original forest. And young people who were about to leave for the city decided to stay and work in bee-keeping instead.

“Thanks to the association, I’ve been able to realize many dreams,” he says. “I’ve had the chance to visit food fairs. I had always wanted to travel to Europe and get to know the continent my ancestors came from, and I was able to do that, too. My world is much bigger now. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve met many people and producers from other regions, and most importantly I have a vision for the future. What we have created is a healthy and wonderful thing, and it will remain for the generations that come after us.”

The economic power of cooperatives

Smallholder producers in Tucuman, in northwest Argentina, received training and formed cooperatives that give them better access to financing and markets Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

Economic exclusion is a major constraint for development in rural areas. But exclusion from basic services and policymaking contributes further to marginalization and worsening of living conditions.

This was the experience of Walter Bianchini, a smallholder producer in Tucuman, in northwest Argentina.

“Our piece of land is so small that we could not use it as collateral to ask for credit,” he says. “Without credit, we could not buy seeds, fertilizers and the machinery we needed to plant and harvest. And when we managed to grow some vegetables and keep a few pigs, there were no markets near here where we could sell them.”

But things changed when the North Western Rural Development Project (PRODERNOA) started activities in his area in 2005. The project was designed in 2003 to cover three provinces. Later five more provinces, including Tucuman, came on board. PRODERNOA aimed to improve the socio-economic conditions of some 6,000 poor rural households by enabling them to gain technical assistance and better access to financing – either credit or non-reimbursable funds, according to the needs and potential of the farmers.

Boosting bargaining power

The programme helped Bianchini and nine others form a cooperative called La Esperanza – a name that means ‘hope’ – that would allow them to increase their bargaining power. Members of the group used to work as temporary farmers known as ‘swallows’, migrating to other provinces such as Rio Negro to pick apples or La Rioja to pick olives and grapes. The purpose of the programme was to keep them home by promoting sustainable rural businesses. La Esperanza received technical assistance and financial support. The members cultivated vegetables such as marrows in greenhouses. The business went very well and the young people no longer needed to search for work far away from home.

For another cooperative in the area, success arrived in the form of agricultural tools and a truck.

“Before PRODERNOA arrived, I was not able to work my land because I could not afford to buy agricultural tools,” says Abel Arga?araz, member of the El Sol cooperative and owner of the house where the members store their tools. “A truck costs about 14,000 pesos [US$4,600] and no one has that much money around here.”

Members of La Esperanza cooperative used a loan from the programme to buy farming equipment they could not have afforded individually Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

From PRODERNOA, El Sol received a loan of US$4,834, or about US$600 per family, which enabled the cooperative to buy a truck.

“We don’t need to spend money any more to rent the truck from someone else,” says Arga?araz. “Instead, we are hiring it out ourselves and with the revenues we have almost repaid the loan.”

Now the cooperative has six members who can demonstrate their past successes and present a strong and united front when they go to the bank for more credit to expand their businesses further.

The organization was able to diversify their crops, plan for the next sowing and develop a strong agreement for sharing the tools they bought with funds from a PRODERNOA loan.

A little loan goes a long way

Cooperative Soraire members used a programme loan to build platforms that keep their pigs safe during frequent floods Credit: Secretariat for Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Food

Carmen Jimenez is one of seven women members of the Cooperative Soraire in Tucuman. She raises pigs and grows corn on a small piece of land inherited from her relatives, who used to work at the nearby sugar cane factory. It used to be a prosperous sugar cane area, but a recent sugar price crisis in the international market has left many of the factories abandoned. Former workers stayed on, living on the small parcels of land once donated by the farm. But access to services such as health care and transport is very limited, and access to land is not secure at all.

“Every year the rains destroy our gardens and our pigs,” says Jimenez. “The water channels around the sugar cane factory are ruined and the rains cause tremendous floods in our houses and gardens. We have complained many times but nothing changes, because these lands still belong to the abandoned factory.”

PRODERNOA provided the cooperative with US$6,650, or about US$950 per family. They pooled their money to build a platform to keep the pigs safe from the floods. They also bought a freezer and a machine to make sausages, which they sell to neighbours.

Before PRODERNOA, men decided which activities women should engage in. Now women manage their businesses and make their own decisions. One result is improved nutrition for their families. Women can produce enough food for home use, and they can sell the surplus on local markets.

Source: IFAD