Cooperative Business Plan

This training will help farmers better understand new and sustainable methods of farming that can be implemented through their cooperatives’ respective business plans.

If this study shows that the planned co-operative is feasible, the group can proceed to the second phase.

If the study suggests it is not feasible, or if the study is not conclusive, the group should re-evaluate its business idea.

The business plans include the vision, mission, aims, and objectives of the cooperatives; strategies referring to a five-year plan; and action plans and activities referring to a one-year strategy plan.

While agroforestry activities are the major priority, the plans also focus on vegetable and fruit farming, dairy production, and beekeeping.

This workshop also introduced agroforestry and highlighted its benefits.

With facilitation from forest experts, the participants became very willing to adopt agroforestry activities and implement these through their cooperatives.ICIMOD will support one of the many activities listed in the business plans of the cooperatives, which is a three-day bio-intensive training to be organized by Everything Organic.The training will focus on soil management, high yield sheet compost bed making, the benefits of organic farming for health and environment, the management of insects and diseases, and fruit and nut tree plantation.This pro forma template is intended to aid cooperative entrepreneurs (and the developers who serve them) in making a preliminary financial assessment of their worker cooperative startup.Many worker cooperative startups are learning business finances for the first time.The selected cooperatives are: Nyureni Fresh Vegetable and Dairy Production Cooperative (Shaktikhaur), Saemaul Agricultural Development Cooperative (Piple), Sangalo Agricultural Development Cooperative (Korak), and Milijuli Beekeeping Cooperative (Padampur), each with 100 members on average.These cooperatives will promote agroforestry among their members and ultimately contribute to the promotion of agroforestry and the adoption of related activities in their respective areas.Both men and women participated in equal proportion.Karki, as the facilitator of the workshop, presented examples of other farmers who had prepared agroforestry business plans.This will reduce pressure on natural forests and will ultimately help mitigate the increase of greenhouse gases caused by deforestation.These plans will be translated from Nepali to English for reference purposes.