Author: H.Shirzad*

The Agricultural Guilds System Needs Restructuring

News ID: ۷۴۸۷۰۳

14 October 2019

From many years ago, farmers have formed different entities to engage in the various fields of operations and decision- making as well as to represents farmers. Coordinating farmers and defending the professional and intellectual property rights of farmers have necessitated developing an organization that led to creating an agricultural guild system.

According to the vision and mission envisages on the Law of the foundation, agricultural guild systems are comprehensive, non- political and non-economic organizations to contribute effectively in rural and agricultural development.

After ten years, when the guild system has been endeavoring to influence the agricultural sector in terms of operations and content, the evidence represents remarkable achievements despite the facing challenges, nationwide.

The preliminary founding Regulation provides a hierarchical top-down structure that the Central council, General board, Provincial and then County agricultural guild system stand respectively, however adopting an evolutionary approach toward the guild system necessitates the whole restructuring with an effective and intellectual management system to coordinate the state and non-state entities.

Based on the new structure, each county after reaching the quorum of the members is allowed to have seven "thematic guild union" maximum. The "chamber of the county guild systems" is the next entity that is formed to supervise the" thematic guild union" of the respective county and administrate by a board consisting of the board members of the affiliated thematic guild union.

"Iran chamber of the agricultural guilds" is the national level entity that includes the representatives of the county guild system and is liable for decision making at the macro level. It has an executive board including six members of the Iran chamber of the agricultural guilds and one agricultural ministerial elected member as well as a non-state member.

"Supreme supervisory board of Iran agricultural guild system" at the national level and "supervisory commission of agricultural guilds" at the district level are the monitoring entities that work parallel to the executive board.

Having a combination of state and non-state members, these supervisory bodies play a significant role in proper monitoring and regulating the operation of agricultural guild system. Nonetheless, the efficiency of them is depended upon the comprehensive cooperation of the member organizations at all levels. It is worth mentioning that the membership of the highest authorities in the supervisory entities authenticates the agricultural guild system and paves the way for enhanced role-playing in the agricultural section.

The above-mentioned changes would improve the role of the agricultural guild system if only the content and performance are transformed too.

As the voice of the farmers and agricultural sector, the agricultural guild system could reflect the agricultural sector if only it covers the three facets including responsiveness (to be responsible toward liabilities and assigned duties), claiming (claiming its own rights and determining the assigned duties of the other entities) and criticism (reviewing the outputs, strengths and weak points).

It is hoped that the structural transformation of the agricultural guild system could help to represent, identification and systematizing the farmers in order to associate effectively in sustainable agricultural and rural development.

*H. Shirzad is the deputy minister of Agriculture-Jahad and secretary of the supreme supervisory board of the agricultural guild system.