Budget 2019: To help marginal cultivators government proposes 10,000 farmer producer organisations
\nCurrently, 3,500 FPOs have been registered and another 3,000 are under promotion, said Pravesh Sharma, former head of the Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium.<\/p>\n
Indian farms are highly fragmented, making it difficult for farmers to adopt modern practices and technology
\nThe government plans to form 10,000 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) in the next five years.
\nThis is expected to help small and marginal cultivators team up to get lower rates for inputs and sell produce at higher rates.
\nFPOs will ensure economies of scale, said finance minister Nirmala Sitharman.<\/p>\n
Indian farms are highly fragmented, making it difficult for farmers to adopt modern practices and technology. The small and marginal land holding area increased to 47.4% in 2015-16 from 38.9% in 2000-01, while that of large holdings decreased to 20% from 37.2% in the same period.
\n\u201cThe budget proposal to set up 10,000 FPOs is a path-breaking step to ensure economies of scale for farmers,\u201d said H K Bhanwala, chairman of National Bank For Agriculture And Rural Development (Nabard).<\/p>\n
\u201cThe existing FPOs are not able to grow as they cannot raise capital. The government could have allowed investment by venture capital for private equity funds in this sector,\u201d said Vilas Shinde, chairman of India\u2019s largest FPO, Sahyadri Farm.
\nAn FPO can raise capital only from farmer members or get grants from the government, which are usually meagre, he said.
\n\u201cIt can also raise capital from banks, which insist on own paid-up capital, which many FPOs are not able to raise. As a result, a large number of FPOs started by various government agencies have remained on paper,\u201d said Shinde.
\nYogesh Thorat, managing director, Mah-FPC, a consortium of FPOs from Maharashtra, said, \u201cIt is a good move that the FPOs have found space in the budget. It will help create institutional structure to aggregate the farmers. We now hope the government will also try to create an entire ecosystem for the development of the FPOs.\u201d
\nFPOs have helped farmers lower the cost of cultivation and achieve higher realisation through collective marketing. Partnership between FPOs and private companies has also helped reduce risk.
\nThe agri value chain needs community-based institutions like FPOs, said Shashank Kumar, CEO and founder of DeHaat, which works with farmers in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha to grow corn, wheat, paddy, litchi and vegetables, and to market the output to big agri-retail chains such as ITC, Godrej, Reliance and Metro.
\n\u201cWe provide technology, credit and value chain linkage to FPOs and its member farmers in a sustainable way. Agri-tech startups like us provide famers with the latest technology and link them to the market for better returns,\u201d he said.
\nCurrently, 3,500 FPOs have been registered and another 3,000 are under promotion, said Pravesh Sharma, former head of the Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Budget 2019: To help marginal cultivators government proposes 10,000 farmer producer organisations Currently, 3,500 FPOs have been registered and another 3,000 are under promotion, said Pravesh Sharma, former head of the Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium. Indian farms are highly fragmented, making it difficult for farmers to adopt modern practices and technology The government plans to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4413"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4415,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4413\/revisions\/4415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/udaen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}