User:Johnnyag

Aku-Ubi Cooperative Union

Mission

Ohaji is a community located in the State of Imo, Nigeria. There are approximately 38,000 farmers in the greater Ohaji area, part of the Ohaji-Egbeme Local Government Area (LGA) supporting near 200,000 family members. Aku-Ubi Cooperative (AUC) unites these farmers through a cooperative partnership agreement. This agreement directs and monitors how farmers conduct business together, with respect to all aspects of the agribusiness. AUC is a registered Farmers’ cooperative union among farmers that acts as a single point that outside interests can conduct business with. It is a registered cooperative organization registered in the Sate of Imo, Nigeria.

Aku-Ubi Cooperative Union is an umbrella registration, under which the pilot program is the effort that has been launched in Ohaji .

This is a rendering of the Headquarters building that will replace the temporary HQ site located on the campus of Imo State Polytechnic university (ISP) under the legislated charter of ISP to support farmers and farmer cooperatives in the State of Imo, Nigeria

AUC is linked to a pan-African strategy called Winning with African Research and Extension (WARE). WARE is a project managed under the umbrella of the American Christian International Foundation (ACIF www.a-c-i-f.org [[1]] ) ACIF is a 501c3 charitable foundation registered in the State of Nebraska in the United States. WARE is cited in the internet, with specific description at this webpage http://www.a-c-i-f.org/page12/page5/index.html

The mission of this Cooperative is to provide improved economies of scale, business acumen, education on several levels, and business savvy leading to improved quality of life and longer life expectancy in the region. It partners individual farmers, ranging from small to large with respect to crop planting, input procurement, education. The partnership minimizes cost while optimizing yield and quality. As a registered legal partnership, it can also posses its own manufacturing factility(ies) that process harvested agricultural commodities. It creates the opportunity to provide profitable processed harvested commodities (e.g. pineapple, cassava among other crops) to customers in the region, across Nigeria, and globally as well.

History of AUC

The Farmers Regional Cooperative Organization is part of a broader project called Winning with African Research and Extension (WARE.) WARE is an overall program, initially targeted in Imo that aims at improving many aspects of the entire food supply chain. A key aspect of the business supply chain model put forward by WARE is to unite farmers into a cooperative partnership that affords them scale that leads to many benefits. Cooperatives have proven themselves to be an effective business model elsewhere both in and outside of Africa. An interesting fact is that in the 1960’s, smaller farm cooperative groups existed in Igbo Land that mirrored some of the characteristics AUC is delivering. AUC employs these historic practices on a much larger regional scale.

Business Model

AUC employs a combined Horizontal/ Vertical Business Structure. The Vertical component is made up of Farmers with a proportionate ownership in the Cooperative’s capital, business, profits and expenses. There is a centralized Headquarters (HQ) group that organizes and coordinates farmers in terms of getting inputs to farmers, providing communication, coordinating harvest collection, and managing all financial aspects of the Cooperative. These are united into a Regional Cooperative Organization. There are five additional functions performed by the ACU, expressed as horizontal components, which cut across all of the Farming Units:

1. Input management office for the Farming Units, to work with the Vendors and various Government Agricultural Agencies
2. Education and Leadership Training co-led by the Coop and Local Agric University
3. A Central Demonstration Farm led by the primary NGO and Local Agric University in the region
4. A Food Processing Center led by the Regional Cooperative and/or local Food Manufacturer. This organization manages the interface and negotiations with processing plants. Again, as a registered legal partnership, ACU can also posses its own manufacturing factility(ies) and be managed by this department.
5. Agri-Marketing Sales Organization led by the Regional Cooperative

Each horizontal unit represents a key function that all farmers in the cooperative benefit from. Individual farmers don’t have the resources to affect these functional groups by themselves. At the Demonstration Farm, a range of support from the best agricultural and engineering schools across the globe will be implemented to support and manage the Research efforts as well as provide the necessary training and initial input for the Extension System.

Aku-Ubi Cooperative Union employs a 2 X 2 model that brings farmers together in a region primarily of privately run farm to form a Regional Coop organization. The Regional organization is then large enough to implement functional groups and activities that can only be affordable by large organizations.

The Coop model was practiced in a simpler way in the past in Igbo land, where Ohaji is located. Family farmer cooperatives were quite common. Twenty to fifty farmers would work together to take advantage of scale. Currently, the local Agricultural Development Plan Organization (ADP) is working to reinvigorate this concept in small communities within the region. Aku-Ubi is a far more serious effort to unite hundreds of thousands of farmers together under one regional umbrella. Aku-Ubi's pilot effort will work to unite 38,000 farmers. All of the effort that ADP is doing, within small communities, is being incorporated into the larger work being done under Aku-Ubi. The Aku-Ubi board of Directors incorporates many individuals who have significant skill and experience that they can bring to bear:

• ADP representation
• International and global representation of experts on food, agriculture, coop organizations
• Major universities in located within the state (Imo State Polytechnic and the NIgerian Federal Institute of Technology at Owerri)
• State government
• State farmers Association
• Micro finance Bank Association for the state of IMO
• Private interests which can contribute to the success of the program

Support for Aku-Ubi Cooperative Union

This is a list of some of the items Aku-Ubi is looking to fund.

A funding initiative has been launched in the USA to develop seed funding for the Aku-Ubi Cooperative. It is being patterened after a young man (a very young man of age 6) who has stepped up the pace to get the donation process moving.

Adam, a six year old youngster, living in Indiana, learned of our efforts in Nigeria to advance farming, food supply, and medical care. He donated his entire life savings to the ACIF Aku-Ubi cause ($31 to be exact). Adam and his sister, Izzie, broke into his piggy bank to get the money. To keep Adam’s action and hopes for Nigeria alive, ACIF has initiated a charity drive called Adam’s Mission. Adam and Izzie are hoping to bring in enough funds to get some of the major initiatives for the Cooperative off the ground.

You can learn more about Adam's Mission at this website http://www.a-c-i-f.org/page49/index.html