Field survey of credit and marketing components of AIFLD OPG farm union strengthening and rural development project

Special evaluation is based upon document review, site visits, and interviews with project and non-project personnel. Too many committees and too few implementors have delayed the recruiting of local staff for both components. Decisionmaking could be simplified if FEDETAICO, the agricultural federation that will run the program when AIFLD departs, assumed a clear executive role under oversight of the Confederation of National Workers (CNT). Also, the program savors somewhat of a paternalistic, top-down approach. Some target areas still function on a subsistence-level economy due either to the lack of support services or to the exorbitant fees charged for them by local grocers (pulperos) who also act as middlemen. Provision of production credit (from the national banking system), consumer goods credit, a savings mobilization plan, and competing services would help break the monopoly of the pulperos and bring these areas to a market economy. A pilot program of this kind is recommended in San Isidro"s El Aquila and Los Santos areas. The assembly center concept should be implemented in the production areas and not on a regional basis, and honest local middlemen and truckers should be integrated into the distribution program to resolve farm-to-assembly-center transport problems; program vehicles should be used to haul commodities. In the San Isidro Valley, a direct distribution program would cut costs by bypassing middlemen. Beans, corn, and some vegetables and fruits are economically promising and dialogue should be initiated with CNP buying stations to provide transportation, drying, and grading that complement CNP"s purchase policy. As for Rio Frio, the planned road to Guapiles will make possible a new tuber program relying on the Hortifruti buying station at Guapiles and will lower transport costs to San Jose, making platano and pina attractive for local markets and paving the way for Rio Frio to become Costa Rica"s next boom area.