As explained in the Projects’ Control System section describing the Integrated Control System, for economic, security, and sociological reasons, individual Poppy for Medicine projects should be implemented in Afghan villages, with several individual projects clustered together in a single district.

Cooperative medicine production systems most efficient model for Afghan village-level Poppy for Medicine projects

In rural Afghan villages, the most economically efficient way of producing medicines would be to group the community’s relevant resources in a cooperative model. Cooperative production systems allow for the pooling of human and agricultural resources for the collective purchase of additional inputs necessary to produce value-added products, and for the fair redistribution of the profits on the sales of these products.

How would a cooperative association work in a Poppy for Medicine project?

During the planning phase of a Poppy for Medicine project, a village shura would establish a cooperative association as a formal business entity, its membership comprising all active project participants. This cooperative association would provide both a formal structure through which a community’s human and agricultural resources could be pooled to enable the production of added-value poppy-based medicines, as well as a transparent means of recycling profits from medicine sales into economic diversification activities to benefit the wider community.

As a locally owned and operated entity, the cooperative association would be regulated and controlled by the project village shura. In exercising social control of Poppy for Medicine project participants, the shura would effectively underwrite the cooperative association’s capacity to contribute to the secure local manufacturing of poppy-based medicines. In turn, by facilitating the production and sale of medicines, the cooperative association would bring significant value to the shura-governed village, thereby providing sufficient incentives to the shura to exercise its social control capacities over project participants, guaranteeing the village’s collective committed participation in the Poppy for Medicine projects.

During the implementation phase of a Poppy for Medicine project, the cooperative association would receive a licence to coordinate the cultivation of poppy for the production of medicines. The cooperative association would then engage shura selected project participants, and would purchase project farmers’ poppy harvests through systems similar to those employed in French wine cooperatives.50 The cooperative association would arrange for the local production of medicines from the village-produced poppy materials, for sale to the Afghan government. The cooperative association would then channel the revenues from medicines sales back to the project participants and into the community through shura approved economic diversification plans and projects.

Shura regulates the cooperative association As the primary institution of control in Poppy for Medicine projects, a project village’s shura would provide regulatory guidance to the local cooperative association. This would facilitate transparency, providing a further layer of security to ensure revenues from the projects are properly channelled into economic diversification. The shura would identify and fund specific projects which would benefit the economic diversification activities of the community as a whole.

Cooperative association provides economic infrastructure for diversification, and a conduit for international development assistance

In controlling the revenues from sales of locally produced medicines on behalf of project participants, a cooperative association would provide the economic infrastructure necessary to fund the controlled diversification of a project community’s economic activities. To maximise the economic impact of Poppy for Medicine projects, international development experts would assist the cooperative association in the development of plans and models for economic diversification. Further, through the project cooperative association, representatives and experts from the international community’s development agencies would provide the necessary training of project participants to enable the production of medicines.

P4M Benefit: Economic Infrastructure The establishment of a cooperative association would provide Poppy for Medicine project communities with a locally owned and operated formal economic infrastructure through which future business–related activities can be developed and enhanced.