Generating higher revenues for farmers

Middlemen take all the profit, while the poor  farmers are left with all the losses". This is a familiar complaint heard again and again at   all forums, where farmers have any repre
    sentation. Unfortunately, Middlemen are a necessary part of the value chain and cannot be eliminated totally. Agribusiness Support Fund (a Matching Grant Fund) and LASOONA (a NGO working in Swat & Dir) have been working to increase the incomes of rural farmers through different market led initiatives. In other words, we asked them, what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it and provided them with the financial & managerial resources to accomplish their objective. Our philosophy was, to minimize the role of middlemen as much as possible and allow the market forces to work for the poor. The results have been spectacular.
The Farmers Enterprise Group:
Onion and Strawberry Farmers' Enterprise Group Dureshkhela is composed of 18 rural farmers, who grow Onion and Strawberry Runners on a commercial scale.
Collectively they produce 4,069 bags (80 Kgs each) of Onions and 8,600,000 runners of Strawberry.
Before ASF & LASOONA support, the farmers used to market their produce individually to different buyers in local as well as distant markets like Rawalpindi and Lahore. The results were highly discouraging for the farmers.
Individually these farmers had limited produce, so the Commission Agents in the distant markets purchased the produce (onions) at low rates. They also lacked information about potential buyers of Strawberry Runners in the distant markets (the area is climatically ideal for it and they are further transported to Punjab and Sindh for fruit production).
Therefore, the farmers were forced to sell their Runners to local Commission Agents at very low prices (they didn't have any bargaining power).
The Catalyst Role:
LASOONA with financial support of ASF formed the Group and they Group, then applied for a Grant from ASF for an Exposure Visit, Market Linkages Development and Assistance in transportation of the Onions to new markets, where linkages had already been developed. The Grant was approved.