The Farmer to Farmer (F2F) team met with the members of Ait Ouijdane cooperative in Ait Hammou commune- Rehamna province (Marrakech Safi) to follow up with them on their recent activities and discuss difficulties that the cooperatives have been facing and possible solutions.

Ait Ouijdane worked for several years on poultry farming, and this was one of their initial reasons for creating a family cooperative in 2018.

The co-op members participated in a training on monitoring and evaluation (M&E) conducted by a F2F volunteer. They went through multiple important sections such as the role of M&E in developing cooperatives, methods of record keeping, commitment, responsibilities and roles, developing proposals, communication, quality control, internal systems, and building partnerships.

This helps the host organization to seize opportunities and improve projects with effective M&E. The participants then concentrated on ways to keep track of indicators so that they could use them for future projects.

The members adopted the recommendations from the F2F assignment (O-H-15), which was to use record-keeping books, so they will be able to monitor and evaluate their operations/project.

Seasonal uncertainties and natural predators change the poultry farming business. Poultry farmers of Ait Ouijdane co-op have taken to contract farming and hedging in order to insulate their businesses from losses. They will develop a detailed business plan that can be submitted to donors to turn from an open poultry farm that was owned and controlled by the cooperative’s members to a contract poultry farm.