Success Story

Photographer: TechnoServe

In partnership with Food for Progress, TechnoServe has helped a cooperative of oil palm farmers in Honduras to more than double its collection capacity and launch its own oil refinement plant.

The 154 farming families that comprise the Aguan Valley Palm Producers Association (APROVA) used to lack access to scales and a centralized collection center. Their disorganization forced them into unfavorable negotiating positions and they earned very low prices.

“Fruit was picked on the farms and every producer brought it to their local processing plants,” APROVA president Osman Duarte says.

APROVA members had aspiration, perseverance and a strong entrepreneurial spirit. They very much wanted to add value to their palm fruits in order to earn more money. They just lacked a clear business strategy.

In 2007, under a Food for Progress agreement, TechnoServe began assisting APROVA on organization development, finance and administration, marketing and refinement.

With TechnoServe support, APROVA has grown its assets by 185 percent and doubled its fruit-collection capacity. Furthermore, a quality control system, which TechnoServe helped the group implement, has decreased the cooperative’s fruit rejection rate from six percent to one and a half percent.

As a result, the farmers’ profits more than doubled in 2008 and enabled them to create an education fund that will be used to train members and develop leaders within the company to assure growth and sustainability.

The producers also have put into practice systems for accounting and auditing finances – facilitating democratic decision-making by the board and general assembly – and implemented a clear business plan.

Since then, they have made additional strides. In April 2009, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), APROVA inaugurated its first oil processing plant, which can process up to five metric tons per day. Now, after selling their fruit to a processing plant, which extracts the palm oil and sells it back to APROVA, the farmers can refine their own oil, thus increasing their share of the profits. The plant can also extract oil components that can be used to create commercially valuable products such as glycerin and soap. A palm oil specialist is also guiding development of a standardization process to help the cooperative maximize quality and guarantee all products meet national quality standards.

APROVA is now recognized in the national palm oil industry for its progress and sustainability, and the cooperative’s membership has increased. Still, Osman believes much hard work remains before his vision for the company can be fully realized.

“To improve our competitiveness, we have to improve productivity on our farms, increase collection capacity and begin to explore new opportunities in the refined oil market,” Osman says.

Ultimately, Osman is convinced that his dreams and those of APROVA’s members will be fulfilled due to the support of TechnoServe and Food for Progress. The cooperative’s members and their families already have improved the quality of their lives and begun to view their futures with new hope For APROVA and its members, every day is now an opportunity to do business and to improve their living standards.