Category Archives: Cooperatives

The cross-party Parliamentary Association for Cooperative Development Researches resumed its activities by holding its general assembly on April 20 for the first time in five years since 2012. Cooperative organizations, particularly those of agricultural cooperatives have been under pressure to reform their business systems and the like, meanwhile people living at local areas including depopulated communities are raising their expectation that cooperatives will play a major role for them in various ways. Under such conditions, the Parliamentary Association of Diet members aims at promoting legislation supporting the whole of cooperative movements in the country, instead of sector-wise cooperative laws. For the time being, the Association plans to address immediate challenges … Continue reading →

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) made a march 28 announcement of farmers’ opinion poll on business activities of multi-purpose agricultural cooperatives (JAs) which are engaged in various business activities. More than 80 percent of farmers polled answered that it will be continuously necessary for the agricultural cooperatives to provide services to their member farmers with businesses such as marketing of agricultural and livestock products, supplying production inputs and banking, as well as farm guidance. The poll of 1149 farmers throughout the country was conducted by MAFF during a period from late August to early September, 2016. MAFF asked these farmers about their opinion on each of JA’s … Continue reading →

ZEN-NOH (National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations) or a national marketing and supply business organization of agricultural cooperatives (JAs) held an extraordinary general representative meeting on March 28 to decide its business reform policies and annual business program with a special emphasis on an increase in farmer’s income. Competitive biddings will be widely applied to ZEN-NOH’s purchases of production inputs from manufacturers so as to lower prices of the inputs to be supplied to JA’s member farmers by getting the advantage of scale in JA’s joint purchasing business system. ZEN-NOH plans to considerably reduce diversified brands of fertilizers to cut their supply prices. In fiscal 2017, for instance, a number … Continue reading →

“Asian Farmers’ Group for Cooperation (AFGC)” set up by farmers’ organizations in nine Asian countries completed a two-day session of its 17th annual conference held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on March 21. A main theme of the meeting this year was how to raise agricultural productivity with use of developed technology in their respective countries. Representatives of Asian farmers’ organizations exchanged their views and shared their experiences each other at the meeting, and reached agreement on enhancement of cooperation for promoting necessary information as well as sharing it among themselves. Participants from the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka presented their respective reports on achievements of farmers’ income-raising projects implemented with … Continue reading →