Georgian Farmers’ Association (GFA) was founded in 2012. Currently, the organization unites over 4,000 farmers in Georgia. GFA establishes its value to members by giving guidance on governmental programs; links to service providers and sources of funding, markets and technical support; consultation on policy issues and representation of members’ interests; defence of smallholder farmers’ rights; participation in policy making; and advocacy of fair access to markets and resources. GFA’s call center provides farmers and stakeholders with useful information and helps to analyse current issues in agriculture. 

GFA actively cooperates with governmental, donor and educational institutions and is a strong coordinator between farmers and all actors involved in agriculture. GFA has a clear ambition to bring Georgia forward and is aware of the fact that farmers need to make a shift from being a peasant to entrepreneur. 

GFA’s main services are: Advocacy, Capacity Building, and Networking. 

In terms of lobbying farmers’ interests and other advocacy activities in December, 2016 the Board of Directors of GFA made a decision to form a Farmers’ Council composed of farmers, with enough power to take part in the process of making policies, dealing with the issues of development of agriculture and improvement of the state of Georgian farmers. 

GFA ensures the connection between its members and distribution company (Georgian Farmers’ Distribution Company – GFDC), which itself collaborates with Adjara group and other hotels/restaurants and supplies farmers’ products to them. Georgian Farmers’ Distribution Company’s aim is to strengthen local farming organizations and to replace import with the local products. In 2017, GFA created an application called “Agronavti”, where a farmer can place the product produced for sale/marketing. “Agronavti” can be downloaded via iOS and Android. In addition to providing matchmaking services, the mobile application offers the following information: weekly prices established for agro products and their statistical changes, researches and innovations in agriculture, more than 60 cycles of agricultural products, weather forecast, agro-calendar, etc.  In addition, since 2018, the product home delivery platform Soplidan.ge has joined the sophisticated, simple and continuous chain of delivery of products and merged with GFDC. 

 The Georgian Farmers’ Association has developed a local standard GeoGAP, which will ensure supply of clients with quality products. A certified farmer satisfying the quality standards will be given an opportunity to market his/her product directly to a client. For now, the marketing is regulated by GFDC, which has all necessary resources for quality control including a mobile laboratory.