The ESFIM program works with farmers organizations to strengthen their capacity to advocate on behalf of their members. The CIOEC representing Bolivia's Economic Peasant Organizations enlisted ESFIM's help to lobby for a new policy on indigenous farmers' rights.
Problems and Purpose
The Bolivian Coordinating Platform of Economic Peasant Organisations (Coordinadora de Integración de Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas de Bolivia, CIOEC) is a small-scale producer association that aims to strengthen the position of indigenous farmers.[1] Once a strong voice in grassroots advocacy, the CIOEC, was marginalized due to ideological differences between it and the governing party that came into power in 2006 under Evo Morales.[2] Wanting to relaunch their advocacy campaign for the Law on Rural Economic Organisations (OECA Law), the CIOEC received help from the Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets (ESFIM) program. ESFIM documented the CIOEC’s previous work, including their strategy and the legal challenges they faced, and then worked with the organisation to redraft and resubmit the OECA Law for parliamentary and presidential approval.[3]
Background History and Funding
The Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets (ESFIM) program started in 2006 with the overall goal of “strengthening the capacities of farmer organisations in developing countries to empower their smallholder members in markets, create an enabling policy and regulatory environment, and effective economic organisations.”[4] Implemented in 11 countries, the program aimed to support national farmers’ organisations to use evidence in their advocacy processes, including supporting them to access local experts to analyse key issues and strengthen the evidence base of their proposals.[5]
Organizing, Supporting, and Funding Entities
The stakeholders involved are the following: the communitarian, village-oriented organisations (sindicatos, ayllus), functional market-oriented organisations (Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas - OECAs), The Coordinadora de Integración de Organizaciones Económicas Campesinas de Bolivia (Coordinating Platform of Economic Peasant Organisations, CIOEC), Agriterra (Dutch agri-agency for development cooperation), AGRINATURA, and the ESFIM research team (funding, capacity building).[6]
The CIOEC, is a small-scale producer association that aims to strengthen the position of indigenous farmers by (a) providing institutional strengthening and technical support in production and marketing to farmer organizations and small cooperatives in various sectors, (b) strengthening the network of producer organizations, and (c) lobbying the government to enhance the legal framework and overall conditions in support of small producers.[7]
Once a strong voice in producer advocacy, the CIOEC was marginalised due to ideological differences with the governing party of Evo Morales, which took power in 2006. CIOEC favoured market-facilitating institutions, and was opposed to state enterprises and interventionist policies such as food price control when these negatively affected the collective marketing activities of their members.[8]
Participant Recruitment and Selection
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Methods and Tools Used
ESFIM uses an action-oriented, collaborative research approach. In Bolivia, the programme involved working with the CIOEC to identify advocacy objectives, set up an action plan, and consult local experts to analyse key issues and strengthen the evidence base of their proposals. Methods and tools used include SWOT analysis, stakeholder mapping, workshops, and various advocacy and lobbying acitivities. [9] Agriterra provided support during the process, applying the “specific methodology to generate policy proposals in a participative manner, the Farmers Advocacy Consultation Tool – FACT.”[10]
What Went On: Process, Interaction, and Participation
The ultimate goal of CIOEC was to forge a new identity and to regain their representative role in the political arena. [11] With the support of ESFIM and a Dutch agency, Agriterra, which provided capacity building and advice, a national workshop was organised to strengthen CIOEC advocacy and policy capacity, to improve its business planning and to intensify its member consultation processes. Using Agriterra’s ‘the Farmers Advocacy Consultation Tool – FACT’, the workshop helped CIOEC identify their primary objective: a relaunch of the existing law on grassroots rural economic organisations (OECAs).
Through the workshop, three work-plans were outlined:
1. “To generate a follow-up to the OECA Law that had been approved in 2008 in Parliament but had never been regulated and implemented due to the reform of the Bolivian Constitution in 2009.
2. To formulate an internal policy and mechanisms for internal articulation, especially with a view to the superposition of responsibilities of elected board members and contracted professional staff in operational decision making.
3. To integrate the departmental divisions of CIOEC into the national strategy of CIOEC-Bolivia, in response to the increasing autonomy of the departmental divisions both financially and politically.”[12]
The new proposed law was drafted to recognize OECAs as organizations with both social and economic objectives, “thus calling for preferential policies to stimulate the sector and trigger inclusive rural economic development.”[13]
Lobbying activities were planned and carried out in consultation with legal experts and was targeted at all actors relevant to the process of discussion for a Law in Bolivia. Through their advocacy, CIOEC approaching identified stakeholders according to their role in the legal process, successfully aligning them around a proposed complementary law.
The proposal was drafted closely with the farmer unions - OECOMs, Communitarian Economic Peasant Organisations, modelled after the sindicatos and ayllus - in order to avoid the appearance that they were attacking the 2011 law (Ley 144) which had created them and granted them many of the rights sought through the new policy. The CIOEC felt that Ley 144 had achieved many of their objectives, but wanted to expand its reach to the OECAs.[14]
In order to gain support of the OECOMs, several provisions deemed attractive to the unions were written into the OECA Law, such as an emphasis on family agriculture and gender and generational issues. The inclusion of these aspects also increased support for the policy from women’s organisations like the Bartolina Sosa Movement which represents the rights of rural women.[15]
Influence, Outcomes, and Effects
Through a cautious alliance with key delegates, the proposal was accepted onto the agenda of Parliament in August 2012. After a somewhat turbulent process, and disagreements with other farmer unions late in the negotiations, the OECA law was approved and enacted on 26 January 2013. CIOEC was recognised as the representative body for OECAs, allowing it to participate in various national and regional rural planning councils.[16]
Analysis and Lessons Learned
The following lessons learned are based on a country-level analysis of the ESFIM program by Giel Ton, coordinator of the ESFIM program, and Christian Goüet and Ninoska González Herrera from Agriterra:
- The OECA Law was based on CIOEC-Bolivia’s lobbying from the early to mid-2000s, giving the organization experience in the commissioning research to support advocacy efforts and priorities. While not a novel approach, ESFIM provided the organization with an opportunity to implement a specific research-advocacy priority. The previous advocacy and lobbying experience of CIOEC proved vital for the successful implementation of the ESFIM research despite limited support from AGRINATURA
- The strategic planning process, facilitated by Agrittera, successfully strengthened the operational internal structure of CIOEC and its services to their members, generating and embedding ESFIM-type activities in CIOEC-Bolivia, and vice versa. “This indicates the synergy that it is possible to achieve when ESFIM activities are set in the context of wider organisational support to national farmer organisations.”
- Due to member and farm leader turn-over rates, the organization requires a systemization of its advocacy strategies to maintain control of the process. The consultation work undertaken to reflect on and define the current vision of the law and to review the work on the original proposal proved very important for re-launching advocacy for the OECA Law in 2012. This approach to advocacy – beginning with identity and capacity building – allowed the CIOEC to restore its position as economic farmer organizations’ primary political representative.[17]
See Also
Farmers Advocacy Consultation Tool (FACT)
Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets (ESFIM) Program
References
[1] Gigler, Bjorn-Soren. (2015). Development as freedom in a digital age : experiences of the rural poor in Bolivia (Report No. 95490). Washington, DC: World Bank Group, , 79. Retrieved from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/571021467997862773/Development-as-freedom-in-a-digital-age-experiences-of-the-rural-poor-in-Bolivia.
[2] Giel Ton, Christian Gouët and Ninoska Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” in Empowering smallholder farmers in markets: Experiences with farmer-led research for advocacy, ed. Giel Ton and Felicity Proctor (Wageningen: CTA-AGRINATURA-LEI, 2013), 33. Available at http://www.esfim.org/wp-content/uploads/Ton-and-Proctor-2013-ESFIM-experiences-with-farmer-led-research-for-advocacy.pdf
[3] Giel Ton et al., “Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets: Strengthening the advocacy capacities of national farmer organisations through collaborative research,” Food Security 6(2), 2014, 264-265.
[4] Giel Ton and Felicity Proctor, “Introduction,” in Empowering smallholder farmers in markets: Experiences with farmer-led research for advocacy, ed. Giel Ton and Felicity Proctor (Wageningen: CTA-AGRINATURA-LEI, 2013), 14. Available at http://www.esfim.org/wp-content/uploads/Ton-and-Proctor-2013-ESFIM-experiences-with-farmer-led-research-for-advocacy.pdf
[5] Ton and Proctor, “Introduction,” 16.
[6] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 33.
[7] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 34.
[8] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 33.
[9] Ton et al., “Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets,” 264-265.
[10] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 34.
[11] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 34.
[12] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 34.
[13] Ton et al., “Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets,” 265.
[14] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 36.
[15] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 37.
[16] Ton et al., “Empowering Smallholder Farmers in Markets,” 265.
[17] Ton, Gouët and Gonzalez, “CIOEC-Bolivia: successful advocacy for legal recognition,” 38.
External Links
ESFIM: http://www.esfim.org/
CIOEC-Bolivia: http://www.cioecbolivia.org.bo/
Notes
The first submission of this Participedia entry was adapted from a research project by the Institute of Development Studies, 'Linking Participation and Economic Advancement’ licensed and reproduced under Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0). Original source: https://www.eldis.org/keyissues/mapping-participation-economic-advancement
Lead image: CIOEC Bolivia, https://goo.gl/Sxqyub