COFA-COAPCL: Overcoming Agrarian Distress
Representing 11 different organizations working towards social and economic change in the lives of the people in more than 560 villages, Urmul Trust leads the poor towards self-reliance by making available to them a package of development services that they themselves decide on, design, implement and eventually finance
COAPCL At A Glance
C hetna Organic Agricultural Producers Company Limited (COAPCL) is a nationallevel, farmer-owned Producer Company registered under the Indian Companies Act 1956 (section 512 A) in Hyderabad on 11 February 2009, representing the small farmers based in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa, who grow a variety of crops. However, as of now, it mainly deals with organic cotton and a few food crops. It aims at helping its members get the best possible price for their produce, benefit from fair and transparent transactions and provide them a whole range of services, from training to marketing. COAPCL has a membership of about 9,000 farmers spread over the three states and the total acreage under them is about 40,250 acres. The annual marketing targets of COAPCL have been 500 tonnes of lint (that is, 1,500 tonnes of raw cotton) in 2009 and 800 tonnes of lint in 2010. The company is being supported by the Interchurch Organisation for Development Cooperation (ICCO) and the Rabo Bank Foundation.
The Evolution of COAPCL
Chetna Organic and Fair Trade Cotton Intervention Programme (OCIP) India began operations in May 2004, initially in two districts of Maharashtra and later expanded to Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, supported by the Dutch NGO Solidaridad and implemented in the field by ETC India, a not-for-profit, socio-technical consultancy company. The immediate context for this project was the large-scale agrarian distress in the cotton growing areas of central India that resulted in many farmers committing suicide because of their indebtedness. At the same time, there were increasing opportunities and markets for organic cotton products in Europe and the USA. The OCIP aims at supporting 17,000 smallholder cotton farmer families to improve their livelihoods by making their farming systems more sustainable and profitable. Its objectives include promoting sustainable farming by upscaling organic and fair-trade (FT) agriculture, mobilizing and organizing farmers and shareholders at various levels in the value chain, improving the socio-economic status of farm labour and advocacy for favourable government policies.