Agriculture or farming has been a forgotten subject for most of us today. Therefore I wish to throw some light on the concept of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO’S), introduced by the government to improve the standard of agriculture.
To start with, let’s first understand what is a Farmer Producer Organisation.
It is a concept introduced to bring individual farmers to join together and form small groups, the aim of the concept is to enhance farmer’s competitiveness and increase their advantage in emerging market opportunities.
In addition to this, FPOs help in the collectivization of small, marginal and landless farmers in order to give them the collective strength to deal with different issues.
Members of the FPO will manage their activities together in the organization to get better access to technology, input, finance and market for faster enhancement of their income.
There is a rise in the need for these farmer producer organisations because; nearly 86% of farmers are small and marginal with average land holdings in the country being less than 1.1 hectares.
These small, marginal and landless farmers face tremendous challenges during agriculture production phase, such as access to technology, quality seed, fertilizers and pesticides including requisite finances.
They also face tremendous challenges in marketing their produce due to lack of economic strength therefore formations of farmer producer organisations will give them the collective strength to deal with such issues.
Under a new central law on inter-state trade, farmers now have freedom to sell their produce in any market within the country, without any objections from the APMCs. No state levies will be imposed on trade outside the APMC mandis and payment has to be made to the farmer within three working days.
The Centre is further on gearing up to create 30,000 farmer producers organisations (FPOs) in next 10 years and the incentives announced for 10,000 FPOs in February may be extended to all such new ventures.
“There is potential to build 30,000 FPOs in India by 2030. We all should work to achieve the target,” says Ashok Dalwai, CEO, National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA).
With this objective in mind, Disability Entrepreneurship And Leadership (DEAL) Foundation has also joined hands to work towards the cause but in a slightly different way. The aim of the foundation is to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for households of people with disabilities, particularly in the rural areas.
With the help of a survey conducted, it has been identified that there a number of households having people with disabilities striving hard to achieve economic independence and financial stability, most of the people own a land which can be used for agriculture.
Hence the foundation strongly feels that introduction of farmer producer organisations would double the income and help them achieve their goal of being economically independent.
DEAL Foundation seeks to support FPO’s develop as viable farmer producer companies resulting in achieving inclusive growth and contributing to economic regeneration and development.
Awarded by Guidestar India