Market Access And Entrepreneurial Training For Value-Added Vegetable Cooperatives In The Mississippi Delta Of Arkansas

This project, funded by USDA Rural Development Office, provides baseline information on how member farmers of vegetable cooperatives in the Delta area of Arkansas can engage in a participatory entrepreneurial training to add value to their produce, better manage their farm business, and exploit market opportunities in order to contribute to the economic development of their communities. The main project objective was to establish a model of a successful value-added enterprise by nurturing business-development skills in value-added vegetable producers that can be shared and replicated for other agricultural enterprises. The project selected board of directors and member farmers of vegetable growers cooperatives in Lee, Phillips, and St. Francis counties and provided them with participatory entrepreneurial training on how to effectively diversify into sustainable low-cost value-added vegetable produce, secure vendor contracts from fresh vegetable wholesale and brokers, and manage their associations in profitable manner. The policy implication from the results of the training sessions indicates that given the adequate entrepreneurial training and managerial personnel, farm cooperatives and their member farmers in the area can effectively expand their value-added vegetable operations to exploit the growing vegetable markets in the mid-south in order to contribute to the economic development of their communities.