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Structure, operation and management of farmers’ organizations
Chapter 2). For example, a local FO will find it difficult to lobby the national government;
however, a higher-level apex organization or federation committee representing local FOs
in a particular area or region will be much better placed to advocate for small farmers and
FO needs through their easier access to national government officials and policy-makers.
The Surat Thani Shrimp Farmers Club in Case Study 2, for example, joined with other
shrimp clubs to form the Thai Marine Shrimp Farmers Association in order to lobby
the government effectively. Higher-level organizations can also have increased capacity
to undertake development activities. For instance, as mentioned in the case study, the
Thai shrimp clubs and the Thai Marine Shrimp Farmers Association organize an annual
two-day Shrimp Day Fair and use the profits to undertake development activities, such
as providing local schools with computers, new buildings and scholarships. At the same
time, a higher- level organization may find it difficult to provide members with certain
services such as production and technical assistance.
Even though there are many benefits to having networks of groups forming
multilevel
structured FOs, they can be difficult to manage and require substantial
capacity and resources to do so effectively. Any expansion in the scope and scale of
collective activities should be a gradual process in which capability in simple collective
activities is developed first before attempting to undertake more complex collective
activities. Multilevel structures require
building from the bottom up, and there is a
danger of establishing additional levels prematurely. For example, even though NaCSA
in Case Study 3 (Box 4) has helped to establish 312 shrimp farmer societies, joining
inputs suppliers, processors and exporters). The profits go
towards local development
initiatives related to the environment and education. For example, the club has spent
THB 6 million on schools in Surat Thani to establish scholarships, donate computers and
construct new buildings. The STSFC also produces the Shrimp Newspaper once a month.
This is a free newspaper, which is now self-financing through the sale of advertising space.
The newspaper covers stories related to all aspects of shrimp farming and is distributed to
shrimp farmers all over southern Thailand. The club has also established the Surat Shrimp
Programme (SSP), a self-certification guarantee that is run by
the club and audited by a
special committee. The SSP standards include:
• food safety standards: no illegal chemicals, no antibiotics (Good Aquaculture Practice
[GAP] still allows the use of legal antibiotics);
• social standards (local development activities as mentioned above);
• environmental standards (e.g. no mangrove destruction); and
• traceability: farmers deposit specimens in a freezer at the club’s office to ensure that if
there are any problems they can be traced back and checked.
The association lobbies the Government through trying to informally influence the
Department of Fisheries. Currently, it is lobbying the government
to raise awareness in
international markets about the Thai Government standard for aquaculture (GAP) that
all farmers must adhere to, and its equivalence to other private standards such as the
Aquaculture Certification Council (ACC) and GLOBALGAP.
As long as international
buyers see the GAP as inferior to other private standards, Thai farmers will have to continue
to pay large amounts of money (especially in cases such as ACC certification, which
costs approximately USD 2 000 per year) to be certified in order
to access international
markets. The association has also lobbied the Government to make the Thai Department of
Fisheries’ GAP and Code of Conduct (CoC) certifications into a single standard, which the
Government is currently in the process of doing.
Sources
: Interviews with the president of TMSFA, Dr Suraphol Pratuangtum, and the president of STSFC,
Mr Ekapoj Yodpinit.
