It aims to empower women in the agribusiness agricultural value chain and enhance their voice in financial decision making
Sponsored and guided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Arya worked alongside the Uttar Pradesh State Rural Livelihood Mission (UPSRLM) in a farm value chain intervention program. The focus was to empower women in the agribusiness agricultural value chain, enhance their voice in financial decision making and nurture their ability to drive collective action.
Through UNDP-India’s COVID Response project, Kamyab Prerna Farmer Producer Company has completed its first market linkage transaction with Sheetala Mata Prerna Producer Group where they sold 251 quintals of paddy to Maa Mundeshwari Mini Rice Mills.
Despite paying a price higher by 15 per cent to the farmers as a contribution to earnings, the FPO made Rs. 10,000 as profit post all payments. Enabling high returns for the farmers, this initiative helped farmers earn 20 per cent more than the existing practice and was deemed a profitable transaction for the FPO.
Notwithstanding the procedural hiccups, this partnership provided an innovative mechanism to leverage credit limits of existing processors to support them in financing the aforesaid FPO to buy produce from farmers. This mechanism can be beneficial even to FPOs with modest working capital for value chain activities.
There are around 118 million farmers in India operating 145 million landholdings; out of which more than 85 per cent are marginal and small holdings. Farmers in India have little knowledge of which crop to grow to attain maximum economic benefit and are often misled by middlemen. Empowering the farmers, this initiative facilitated the procurement of a variety that has better market acceptability.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of building resilient farming communities. Through this multilateral-public-private partnership, farmers and FPOs are benefitted gravely as it helps in bridging the demand-supply gap, enabling farm level value addition, reducing food loss and waste and controlling price volatility.
This initiative is being undertaken in 12 blocks in Varanasi, Chandauli, Mirzapur, Sonbhadra, Gorakhpur, Deoria districts of Uttar Pradesh currently that will benefit approximately close to 4000 small and marginal farmers, mostly women, over a period of 6 months.
