Business Planning for Fruit Producers in Colombia

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Arturo Noriega traveled to Colombia in November 2019 to train and work with staff and associates of ASOFRUTIFLOR, APROGUA and ACUBF on business plan development. Arturo is the founder and CEO of Centro Community Partners, a non-profit organization that fosters socioeconomic change by providing business advisory services and leadership programs to rising yet underserved entrepreneurs who want to launch or grow their businesses and create jobs in their communities. Arturo has more than 20 years of work experience as a management consultant, specializing in economic development, strategy, governance, risk management, finance, and organizational change management. He has an MBA in Strategic Management and Leadership, a BA in Economics as well as a concentration in Finance. 

The three organizations that Arturo supported are smallholder farmer associations that are being supported by CorpoValle, a non-profit development agency focused on planning, evaluating and implementing agricultural development projects in Colombia’s Valle del Cauca department. CorpoValle works with 54 smallholder agricultural associations by strengthening their business and technical capabilities. It reaches 1,700 fruit and vegetable growers in 29 municipalities, impacting 3,300 households or approximately 12,000 people. 

ASOFRUTIFLOR is an association that produces guava, located in the Toro municipality. They had recently started to buy equipment to build a plant to produce juice, pulp and sweets derived from guava. Although at the time they did not have the resources to build the plant, they wanted to develop the plant’s business plan to apply for funding from different sources. APROGUA is an indigenous association that produces blackberry, located in the Kwe'sx Yu' Kiwe indigenous reservation of the Florida municipality, which is part of the metropolitan area of the departmental capital, Cali. Just 20% of their farmers sell their produce together and although they are very organized, they needed some business advice and guiding. Finally, ACUBF is an association that produces limes, located in the Pradera municipality. Although they are also very organized and committed, they wanted to develop a business plan to ensure that they could increase their fruit production.


During the two weeks of his assignment, Arturo conducted site visits and met separately with the executive teams of the three associations to conduct financial and risk analysis, and to teach them to create their financial statements. He also met independently with the wider associations to evaluate their business models and help them develop their business plans. At the end of his assignment, Arturo made three main recommendations: 
  1. The associations should receive more formal training and education in writing, reading and basic business knowledge from qualified business professionals. 
  2. The associations should make formal requests for funding from appropriate capital sources.   
  3. The associations should test the quality of their products to gauge the level of demand. 

Arturo also left several specific recommendations for each association. Our field office recently met with ACUBF and found out that they had already implemented three of their seven recommendations and were in the process of implementing two more, while ASOFRUTIFLOR had already implemented five of their eight recommendations and were committed to implementing two others.

Thanks to Arturo’s support and experience, the three associations now have a thorough and relevant business plan to ensure the profitability and sustainability of their fruit production. These plans will help them to scale their markets, share resources, increase production and compete more efficiently to generate more revenue. By providing volunteer technical assistance to smallholder farmers in rural areas of Colombia, USAID’s Farmer-to-Farmer program improves the quality of life of underserved and remote populations.


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