The State Government is mulling to formulate a policy on farmer producer organisations (FPOs) for generating higher returns to farming communities.
The proposed policy would facilitate establishment of FPOs, while integrating and promoting the activities involved in the field of agriculture and allied sectors.
The Government would make a single-window clearance system to support FPOs for easy issue of licences to trade in inputs like seed, fertiliser, farm machinery and pesticides etc for use of their members as well as routing the supply of agricultural inputs through FPOs at par with cooperatives.
Agriculture Production Commissioner Gagan Kumar Dhal, Principal Secretary Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment Saurabh Garg and Director Horticulture Bijaya Ketan Upadhyay held several rounds of talk in this regard among the officials and also with the stakeholders.
Sectors like fisheries, dairy, livestock, food processing, agri-business, warehousing and logistics will be given focused attention and with the support of global technologies, necessary infrastructure facilities will be in place.
The objective of the proposed policy is to strengthen collectivisation of producers, especially small and marginal farmers, into producer organisations as one of the most effective pathways to address many challenges of agriculture but most importantly, it will lead to improved access to investment, technology, input and market, experts say.
These FPOs would be facilitated with new technology, infrastructure, knowledge, information technology application, market intelligence an finance arrangement so that they can ensure availability of end- to-end services to their members.
The FPOs would successfully deal with challenges and constraints that confront farmers by leveraging collective strength and bargaining power to access financial and non-financial inputs, services and appropriate technologies, reduce transaction costs, tap high value markets and enter into partnerships with private entities on more equitable terms.
This would ensure improvement of production, productivity, direct linkages and higher unit value realisation for the farmers and easy and cost effective access to specific quantum and quality of raw material required by the industry.
The policy aims at maximising direct and indirect employment generation through establishment of marketing outlets, creating necessary supply chain like sorting and grading yards, transportation, warehouses and cold storages.
The FPOs would be registered under the Cooperative Societies Act, 1962 or as a farmers producer company (FPC) under Section 581 (C) of the Indian Companies Act, 1956, as amended in 2013.
The FPOs would be linked to financial institutions like Cooperative Banks, Regional Rural Banks, commercial banks and other financial institutions for developing working capital, storage and processing infrastructure and other investments.
Intensive capacity building and training programme would be conducted for developing strong cohesion among the member producers. The
Government would promote course on FPOs in a concessional rate for better understanding among the FPO members.
The FPOs would render services like input subsidy, finance, technology, insurance, procurement, packaging, marketing and networking.
Each relevant line departments like Agriculture, Horticulture, Fisheries and Animal Husbandry would have their own resource institutions (RI) and project management unit (PMU) at their Directorate level for the purpose.
Several assistances like corpus funds, investment promotion subsidy, interest subsidy, equity grant, credit guarantee fund, exemptions from stamp duty and concession in registration charges are proposed for strengthening of the FPOs.