Agri-ProFocus is an international network with Dutch roots, that promotes and drives entrepreneurship among farmers and their organisations. They jointly support farmers who have the ambition and entrepreneurial capacities to make their resources and social capital more productive and sustainable.
International network with local “AgriHubs”
The Agri-ProFocus network is active in the Netherlands as a partnership with 35 member organisations and in 13 countries in Africa and Asia with local “AgriHubs”. Active network partners are producer organisations, agribusiness companies, NGO’s, financial service providers and government agencies. They believe that primary producers worldwide are the key to local economic growth and sustainable agri-food systems and food security for all! Agri-ProFocus can support you with information, contacts and establishing links with businesses in their local or international network. Through close cooperation with the Dutch Embassies, they have access to Dutch private sector investment funding. They deal, via innovation communities of practice, with value chains such as dairy or potatoes; themes such as access to finance and gender in value chains. But also promoting youth in agribusiness or regulating land tenure in these 13 countries.
The tool 2-2-Tango for farmers and firms
The tool 2-2-Tango assesses the relationship between farmers and firms in a business relationship. This tool is part of the Agri-ProFocus learning trajectory on Firm-Farm relationships and contracting; taking market linkages to the next level. The tool 2-2-Tango focusses on bringing the most important perceived strengths and weaknesses of the relation between farmers and firms to the surface, by letting both groups score their perceptions on a number of topics. Cases concerned a/o the value chains of bananas, cassava, coffee, dairy, maize and cashew in some countries in Africa.
The 3 major phases for conducting 2-2-Tango are:
-understanding the farmer-firm case
-bringing out perceptions and views
-bringing the relation to the next level
In this third phase they do a debriefing with farmers and firms on the most important results of the scoring assessment. They also discuss with farmers and firms on reasons behind these results. Finally, the will have farmers and firms together to discuss on ways forward to improve their farmer-firm relation. The 2-2-Tango tool is flexible: the statements are tailored for each specific business case. And the tool is cheap and easy to apply! For more information you can contact Inger Janssen (ijanssen@agri-profocus.nl) or visit the website www.agri-profocus.nl.
ir. Ad Merks (community-manager)
