Project Objectives:
- Mobilising farmers into groups of between 15-20 members at the village level (calledFarmer Interest Groups or FIGs) and building up their associations to an appropriate federating point i.e. Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) so as to plan and implement product-specific cluster/commercial crop cycles.
- Strengthening farmer capacity through agricultural best practices for enhanced productivity.
- Ensuring access to and usage of quality inputs and services for intensive agriculture production and enhancing cluster competitiveness.
- Facilitating access to fair and remunerative markets including linking of producer groups to marketing opportunities through market aggregators.
Support for Promotion of FPOs
- The formation and development of FPOs will be actively encouraged and supported by the Central and State Governments and their agencies, using financial resources from various Centrally-sponsored and State funded schemes in the agriculture sector agencies. This goal will be achieved by creating a coalition of partners by the concerned promoter body, involving civil society institutions, research organisations, consultants, private sector players and any other entity which can contribute to the development of strong and viable producer owned FPOs.
- Detailed guidelines for the promotion of FPOs, including methodology of selecting RIs, budgets and registration processes are annexed to this Policy. These are meant to guide the Central and State Government agencies engaged in FPO promotion and provide a detailed roadmap to achieve the vision of building FPOs, especially if funds under Central schemes are being used to promote FPOs. However, State Governments are free to develop their own independent guidelines to support FPOs if they are using. State budgetary funds for the same.
Selection of Resource Institutions (RIs)
In case a State Government wishes to appoint SFAC as its nodal agency for identification of RIs and/or the promotion of FPOs, then it is not necessary for it to follow the detailed empanelment of RI process provided in Annexure-3 of Operational Guidelines Booklet available in the website. They may directly approach SFAC to submit a project proposal to take up FPO promotion and make available the necessary budget after SFAC submits a proposal and the same is approved by the SLSC.
However, if the State is undertaking direct appointment of RIs and promotion of FPOs, then the process in Annexure-3 must be followed.
