July 20, 2007
ACDI/VOCA Hosts IFFCO Visit
On July 19-20, ACDI/VOCA hosted representatives from the Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO), of New Delhi, a longtime ACDI/VOCA voting member. On July 19, IFFCO Sr. Executive Director Dr. D. K. Shukla and Chief Manager Mr. Ghansham Das visited ACDI/VOCA headquarters to meet with ACDI/VOCA President Carl Leonard and other key staff, to renew ties and learn about ACDI/VOCA's Growth-Oriented Microenterprise Development Program in India.
The following day Vice President for Public Relations & Communications Perry Letson escorted the Indian visitors to Richmond, Va., to visit Southern States Cooperative, another longtime ACDI/VOCA member. Southern States President and CEO Tom Scribner and other senior officers briefed the visitors on the co-op’s business model and its status. Southern States, which had $1.6 billion in revenues in 2006, has approximately a 30 percent market share in fertilizer in its Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern service area—roughly comparable to IFFCO’s share in India.
In the afternoon, Shukla, Das and Letson visited a Southern States “crop center,” a retail outlet in King William, Va., that caters to farmers. There they were joined by Bruce Johnson, an ACDI/VOCA and Southern States board member, whose family farms about 5,000 acres in the area. They saw an equipment demonstration and observed as a farmer received a computerized fertilizer application recommendation based on a soil analysis.
ACDI/VOCA and IFFCO have enjoyed a strong, mutually beneficial relationship since the Indian co-op’s inception, and IFFCO has been a loyal ACDI and ACDI/VOCA member ever since.
The relationship began with a 1967 ACDI report on the Indian fertilizer market written by a team headed by Don Thomas, later president of ACDI. It recommended a $125 million fertilizer venture to help make India self-sufficient in food production. To implement the project, $40 million was raised, mostly from USAID, with additional funding from the British and Dutch governments. U.S. farmer cooperatives pitched in $1 million. The government of India and Indian cooperatives matched with an investment of $85 million. Thomas then served as president of Cooperative Fertilizers International, the entity created to provide U.S. co-op expertise and assistance for the project's construction and start-up of two modern large-scale fertilizer plants which went on line in the early ‘70s.
The founding of IFFCO, today one of the world's largest fertilizer concerns, arguably ranks as one of the most effective projects ever undertaken with USAID funding. The co-op is the main producer of fertilizer in India, where it currently serves 600,000 villages. It has diversified into insurance and power generation, and has facilities in Oman, Senegal and Jordan. For information on IFFCO today, visit www.iffco.nic.in.
Dr. Shukla expressed his appreciation for the visit to ACDI/VOCA and Southern States by saying, “All three organizations share the great cooperative family.” He invited further contacts with IFFCO in India.