Platform for farmers

Parveen Arora

With the aim of strengthening the agriculture sector and doubling farmers’ income, the Union Government plans to set up 10,000 new farmer producer organisations (FPOs) across the country with new guidelines.

The FPO, a group of farmers dealing with business activities related to farm produce, works for the benefit of members, including small, marginal and women farmers. Presently, there are over 450 FPOs with more than 76,000 farmers in Haryana. Of them, around 30,000 got themselves registered on the IT portal of the Small Farmer Agri-business Consortium Haryana (SFACH), a nodal agency looking after the FPOs’ formation and management in the state.

According to a survey conducted by The Tribune, most of the FPOs in the state are facing challenges such as a lengthy and costly process to avail certification for organic farming, difficulty in getting loan, no appropriate price of produce, low productivity in organic farming, and inadequate knowledge of the market.

“We had started an FPO with 100 members. Now, we have 600 members, of which 150 are involved in chemical-free/organic farming of desi wheat and paddy. We applied for a certificate for organic farming around four years ago, but it is a cumbersome affair for a farmer. It should be cost-effective,” says SP Tomar, vice-chairman of Horticulture Farmer Producer Company Limited, Karnal.

He say farmers have little awareness about the branding of their produce. “The members who cultivated organic wheat and paddy witnessed a downfall in production in the first three years as the soil takes time to gain fertility without fertilisers,” he adds.

Vikas Chaudhary, director, Progrowers Producer Company Limited, Taraori, and other members of the FPO had to face hiccups. They could not get a loan from a bank as they do not have any property to mortgage. “We are 372 members. We have to fight hard for several months to get a bank loan,” he rues. He, however, says that now, with the support of the Horticulture Department and SFACH, they got a project of the crop cluster development programme, under which they will process and package tomato products.

Dr Paras Ram, Agri-business Manager (FPO), SFACH, claims Haryana is witnessing a good response as farmers are showing interest in joining the FPOs. “The state government has mandated to form FPOs for agriculture-related activities. In 2018, while fixing the targets for Parivartan blocks, the state decided to form 10 FPOs in each of the 46 Parivartan blocks and assigned this work to SFACH with the objective of strengthening the farmers’ capacity and skills for bargaining in trade practices of agri-business, to provide marketing linkages, facilitating access to fair and remunerative markets, including linking of producer groups to marketing opportunities through market aggregators and employment generation,” he adds.

He says SFACH had signed an MoU with NABCON (NABARD Consultancy Services) for management and providing incentives to 13 FPOs. As a result, these FPOs are engaged in various agri-business activities and have significant business turnover as start-ups.

NABARD is also playing a vital role in this project. Abhimanyu Malik, District Development Manager, NABARD, Karnal, says since around 85 per cent of farmers are small and marginal and the average landholding size has shrunk to 1.08 hectare, farmers need to come together to reap the benefits of collectivisation.

Battling roadblocks

Many FPOs based in Haryana are facing issues such as lengthy, costly process to avail certification for organic farming, difficulty in getting bank loans, unremunerative price of produce, and inadequate knowledge of the market.

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