The Showdown

As you might remember, thanks to the efforts of team HODA, the Farmer Group Business Development Fund was created with the money raised from the event. In brief, the fund will award 5 groups with GHC 100 loans to put towards their group farming business activity. In order to be eligible for the loan, groups had to be undertaking the Agriculture As A Business program as well as fill out an application that challenges the groups to reflect and plan for their farming activity.

After giving the groups a month to plan and fill out the applications with their AEAs, the showdown took place yesterday where together, the AEAs and myself, would evaluate the applications and choose the 5 recipients of the loans. We initially stated that a committee would be formed to evaluate the applications, but after receiving them I realized what a great learning opportunity this would be to help AEAs better understand key factors in deciphering what makes groups strong business minded groups.

Since the meetings was supposed to take place the week I headed off on my healthploration, I decided to bring my AEAs breakfast… koko! As they gulped down their beloved meal, I began to introduce them to the workshop’s objectives:

1. To learn and understand from the applications and what makes groups business minded.
2. To chose the 5 groups that would be selected for the loan from the FGBD Fund.

We then headed into the main event: each AEA would represent their groups and review their group’s applications; other AEAs would than question the group’s applications on a basis of why they thought the group was or wasn’t (well more like just wasn’t) suited for the loan. Based on the applications, many great discussion were sparked:

• Should a group who is still paying off a loan be able to receive another one?
• Many people felt it wasn’t appropriate that an indebted group should undertake another loan. The main reason for this is that the loan might be used to pay off the other loan, or failure to follow through with their plan could cause more debt. The argument on the other hand was that one of the groups whom have an outstanding loan (Abag-yine Women Group – Gowrie/Kasingo), were given a timeline to pay it off and were paying it off accordingly. What do you think?
   
• Should a group who has plenty money in their account be given a loan or should they use the money saved in their account?
• This debate was intense. It involved the Pupeelum Women’s Group – Sapooro, whom have over GHC 700 in their account. According to their AEA that is the savings of all the women’s money (including individual earned) from processing, and that they wanted to the loan now for production. He said they didn’t want to use the money saved since they use that money during the lean season to support from themselves. The counterargument was that it doesn’t makes sense to take a loan that involves having to pay interest that can instead be profit if you invest your own money. What do you think?

Besides those two main discussion points, people also challenges each other on:

• Errors in judgment in the expected yield
• Low amount of money in account for groups that have been around for a while
• Groups planning for too big a project next year (e.g. what they need to save is much less than their expected profit)
• Expenses being more than the amount of the loan and their saving combined. (i.e. Where will the rest of the money come from)

With 2 groups being disqualified (1 for not being part of the curriculum yet and the other not submitting a complete business plan), 10 groups were left to be decided from. The initial plan was to have the AEAs vote on who they think should receive the loans, but after some input from the crowd, they mentioned that it would be too difficult to do without properly analyzing the applications. Therefore, we decided that a group from each zonal area would receive a loan and two would be awarded to the zone that had the most groups. Ironically, the groups in the end received the loan were pretty much the ones I was hoping would! The groups chosen for the loan are,

• Antanpisi Goat Production Group
• Antanpisi is a new group and the one that worries me the most. If they can pull it together and commit to working together, they should do well.
• Tengre Leafy Vegetable Growers – Gowrie
• This group consists of the community that welcomed me to their village when I first arrived. I love them! They are all very hard working and should have no problem succeeding in this opportunity. Since they are doing rice, I’m hoping to get Alnel to provide some assistance with the new technology he’s introduced!
• Apedi Farmers group (Duah)
• I’ve only seen this group in action once, but from what I did see they were very organized and had an excellent secretary. Their AEA is a National Service rep who has also been given the opportunity through this to show what he can really bring to MoFA if hired!
• Akantaba (Adiediobisi)
• What’s really cool is that this group actually plans to use their profits to build a craft centre for their group to weave baskets in… check that out, a physical result that isn’t a handout!! The money from the loan will be used to buy the straw they use to weave in bulk, so that they can buy a lot when the price is low and thus earn more of a profit in the end when they sell it to an international exporter who I believe purchases them at a fixed price.
• Abokobise Women’s Group
• This group is the first group to finish the WHOLE curriculum so certainly deserved this. They are probably the best group I’ve seen here in Bongo and can’t wait to see what they’re capable of.

All the groups here have a lot of potential from what I’ve seen and I think they can do very well with some hard work and proper guidance from their AEAs (all of which are All Stars!). So stay tuned as we put opportunity to the test, and learn how exactly do you take Agriculture As A Business?

You can check out the digital reproduction of all the applications here!