In a bid to expedite setting up and promotion of Farmers Producers Organisations (FPOs) in the country under a recently launched Central scheme, the National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC), a cooperatives focused organisation under the Union Agriculture Ministry has roped in Indian Council of Agricultural Research’s (ICAR) Institutions and Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) in 116 blocks in the country.
The idea is to use a well-oiled network backed by technology and scientific knowledge of the ICAR and KVKs which are spread throughout the country. Presently, of the total 717 KVKs which have huge spread across India, 468 are under state agricultural universities, 65 under ICAR and 22 under central agricultural universities in the country.
Union Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Parshottam Rupala at a virtual orientation workshop organised by the NCDC on Friday termed the NCDC’s move to involve KVKs as Cluster Based Business Organizations(CBBOs) as commendable.
The Central Scheme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year with an aim to bring small and marginal farmers into production value chains and help them boost their income.
The Minister pointed out that “KVKs play a significant role in providing technical guidance and reaching out to the farmers living in far off regions in the country” and said that CBBOs will be the platform for an end to end support system for different issues in FPO cooperative business helping farmers get various support, and be the game changer in bringing about economic prosperity.
Calling the scheme as a revolutionary scheme, NCDC MD Sundeep Nayak said that “we are getting massive response from the farmers. Under this we will be using well-structured backbone of the ICAR which will help us meet the Prime Minister’s vision of Atmanirbhar Bharat through FPOs under the Cooperative Societies Act.”
For the current fiscal year 2020-21, NCDC has been given a target for formation and promotion of 529 FPOs in 103 districts where one district one product’’ policy is being implemented.
At the workshop which was aimed to make stakeholders such as KVKs and ICAR aware of the scheme and of role and responsibilities of CBBOs, Dr T Mohapatra, DG ICAR talked about the challenges and opportunities of formation of the FPOs as he said it were not only important to set up the farmers’ entity but also make them sustainable in the long run.
Dr AK Singh, DDG ICAR was of the view that as small farmers have lots of problems at the ground level, FPOs will ensure them multiple benefits from ‘farm to market’ within a legal framework.
Under the Central Sector Scheme “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs)” the Government has kept a total budgetary provision of `4,496.00 crore for five years with a further committed liability of `2,369.00 crore for next five years towards handholding of each FPO from its aggregation and formation.