A contract was agreed and signed at the end of October 2010 between LEI Wageningen and FFA for a stage one process November 2010-January 2011. As part of the stage one process, a series of working meetings were held in Hyderabad, India, during November 1-5, 2010 to develop the work programme and to initiate the necessary preliminary start-up work. The meetings comprised closed meetings between the FFA and the national and Agrinatura research teams as well as open meetings with representatives of 15 Farmer Organisations. Specifically, representatives of the Farmer Organisations emphasised the importance of understanding state-level differences in relevant laws and policies, the need to have clear understanding of language/terminology used, and the value and need for understanding market models and sharing them. They further stressed the need for the work to be evidence based. It also was noted that there are many examples of good practice developed and adopted in India that had not been documented and shared.

During the closed working meetings the methodology for the collaborative research was discussed, including the final selection of case studies. As a working resource document to guide local researchers, the Agrinatura Team – Felicity Proctor and Bart Doorneweert – had prepared a methods paper. The approach proposed and adopted stresses to the need to analyse market inclusion or exclusion from an evolutionary or historical perspective, focusing not so much on the farmers’ situation at a particular point in time but in terms of their capacity to sustain participation in a given supply chain as the market evolves and becomes more competitive and challenging.

This work would be taken forward through the preparation of a literature review of relevant India published material and the detailed study of six cases from across three States in India. Related policy notes will be generated which will feed into the Confederation of India Farmers Associations’ (CIFA) Annual Conference and potentially into the work of the Agriculture Parliamentary Committee as well as the CIFA pre-budget discussions on agriculture with the Finance Minister to be held in February 2012. The CIFA conference is provisionally scheduled for November 2011. The research will also provide evidence-based inputs from farmers’ organisations into the annual forward planning processes of the Planning Commission aligned to India’s National 5 year plan. Wider dissemination of the evidence generated will be through the FFA website as well as hard copy distribution. It is also anticipated that, depending on the quality of the outcome of the research and the continuation of the FFA commitment, the Agrinatura team with FFA/CIFA may explore additional dissemination opportunities, including bringing together a wider consortia of interested parties to take this work forward beyond the life of the ESFIM programme. This option will be reviewed around May 2011.