Infusion of capital in agri-infra could be a game-changer in farmers’ income: Experts

A day-long workshop was recently organised by the Confederation of NGOs of Rural India on FPOs where experts deliberated on potentially viable and efficient ways for farmers upliftment

A day-long workshop was recently organised by the Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI) on FPOs. The workshop was supported by Dhanuka Agritech; Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA); Central for Political Studies, JNU and Vaikunth Mehta National Institute of Cooperative Management (Vamnicom).

Small Farmers’ Agri-business Consortium (SFAC) has informed that more than 50 per cent Farmers’ Producer Organisation (FPOs) promoted by SFAC under various government programmes are potentially viable and efficient while some others are in nascent stages of development. It is expected that given the right ecosystem support, especially infusion of capital in agri-infrastructure through credit mobilisation from banks and NBFCs, they could be a real game-changer and contribute to increasing the income of member farmers substantially.

Speaking at a national workshop on ‘Strengthening Ecosystem of Farmers’ Producer Organizations’ Neelkamal Darbari, MD, SFAC, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmer Welfare, Government of India said, “The government has taken up the very challenging cause of creating financial and marketing linkages for aggregation of farmers through a Central Sector scheme for creation of 10,000 FPOs across the country. The scheme is under implementation through different Implementing Agencies, which have already created more than 1770 FPOs. These FPOs have the potential to be viable entities, but the biggest challenge they are confronted with is the lack of finance from banks.”

RG Agarwal, Group Chairman, Dhanuka Agritech, expressed concern about the spurious agriculture inputs. “There is little difference in the area under cultivation between India and China, but China’s agriculture GDP is three times higher than India mainly because of quality products used in China as against India wherein a large chunk of products are spurious, resulting in lower production. It is the need of the hour to take strict action against spurious manufactures of fertilisers and pesticides,” he said.

During the workshop, Binod Anand, Secretary General, CNRI; Dr Surendra Nath Tripathi, DG, IIPA; Dr KK Tripathy, OSD, Minister of Cooperation; Arun Raste, MD & CEO, NCDEX; S Sivakumar, Group Head, ITC, Agri & IT Business; Hema Yadav, Professor & Director, VAMNICOM; Sachin Sharma, Associate Professor and Sushil Singla, Principal Resident Commissioner, Government of Himachal Pradesh among others expressed their thoughts on various issues related to farmers and FPOs.

A day-long workshop was recently organised by