About 30 farmer producer organisations (FPOs) in three states, including West Bengal, reported more than two-fold increase in their annual turnover in the last two years after a pilot intervention to make them viable, Small Farmers Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC) said on Sunday. SFAC, an autonomous body promoted by the Union Agriculture Ministry, collaborated with Grant Thornton Bharat in 2018 to introduce multiple interventions on 30 select FPOs in West Bengal, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh for two years.
“A gamut of interventions were undertaken by way of input, credit, common facilities and market linkages, in addition to capacity-building and training of the Board of Directors (BoDs) on business planning. Notably, almost all of the FPOs were credit-linked for either working capital or term loan,” said SFAC Managing Director Neelkamal Darbari in a statement. According to SFAC, the impact assessment of the interventions showed that the average turnover of 30 targeted FPOs increased from Rs 44 lakh to over Rs 118 lakh per annum in a span of two years. The underlying purpose of the pilot project was to collectivise and energise FPOs operating at various levels across these states and increase farmers’ income.