Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management: concepts and experiences

3.4 
FARMERS’ ORGANIZATIONS ACTIVITIES AND SERVICES
The main purpose of most FOs is to provide or facilitate access to services to their 
members. These services are usually business-oriented and provided by independent 
service providers if the FOs themselves cannot provide them profitably. Aside from 
business services, FOs can sometimes also provide social services to members and/ 
or the wider community; for example, the Thai Marine Shrimp Farmers Association 
described in Case Study 2 focuses some of its activities on community development. 
A survey of 400 aquaculture FOs in the Asia-Pacific region by NACA in 1997–98 
showed their most common activities were as follows:
• highlighting farmer problems;
• mobilizing public and institutional support for farmers;
• protecting the interests of the FO;
• providing technical services to members;
• becoming organized to resist exploitation by intermediaries and local pressure 
groups;
• mobilizing credit; and 
• influencing policy decisions (Hough and Bueno, 2002).
Many FOs have developed into multipurpose enterprises that offer a wide variety 
of services to their members, such as a broad supply of farm inputs, agroprocessing 
and storage facilities, marketing and credit supply. Before looking at the most common 
activities and services provided by FOs, the final two case studies will be introduced. Case 
Study 4 (Box 7) introduces the CBOs that have been established in Noakhali, Bangladesh, 
and Case Study 5 (Box 8) looks at how Indonesian shrimp and milkfish farmers have 
established four Aquaculture Livelihood Service Centres in Aceh, Indonesia.
In general, the most common activities and services provided by FOs are those 
summarized below (adapted from Penrose-Buckley, 2007).
3.4.1 Input supply
Facilitating input supply to members at the lowest possible price is one of the major 
services provided by FOs regardless of their types. Like the Samroiyod Shrimp 
Farmers Cooperative in Thailand, the ALSCs in Indonesia (Case Study 5) and the 

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Aquaculture farmer organizations and cluster management – Concepts and experiences
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Greater Noakhali CBOs in Bangladesh (Case Study 4), the FOs often buy inputs in 
bulk, at lower prices (or higher quality, such as NaCSA’s farmer societies using the 
contract hatchery approach), and supply them to their members.