The objective of this initiative is to create “Farmer Producer Organizations” (FPO) and to collaborate with ICAR, NABARD, Nafed, Apaeda AI technology, Cropin etc. to lend a helping hand to farmers.
The idea behind the Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) is to assist Farmers who are the producers of their agriculture produce to form the groups and to register themselves under the Indian Companies Act. The members of the FPO are the farmers themselves.
To facilitate this process, the Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) was mandated by the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India, to support the State Government in the formation of the Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO). A minimum of 5 and a maximum of 15 farmers are required to form an FPO, and their land holdings should be adjacent to one another. The idea is to leverage economies of scale by cultivating bigger collective land holdings instead of smaller individual segregated land holdings, to reduce cost of cultivation. Besides, the FPO ideally contracts with a few big buyers of farm produce, like Big-Basket, Reliance Fresh, D’Mart for their produce, thus eliminating multiple chains of middlemen and hence able to get a better deal. The goal is to enhance the farmers’ competitiveness and to increase their advantage in emerging the market opportunities. This is one the models of “Contract Farming”. However, unfortunately, farmers have very little access to the emerging Corporate Buyers Market.
This is where our NGO, IIS&SF comes into action as a facilitator to all such FPOs and will provide latest farming technology like Artificial Intelligence, Cropin technology, better quality seeds, agricultural inputs from ICAR research scientists, resources and finances from Banks, NABARD and most importantly IIS&SF from its platform assist them in connecting with Corporate buyers and enter into a tripartite agreement between the Buyer-Seller (FPO) and IIS&SF who in turn will ensure that both Buyer and the Seller honour their commitments.
At present we are in touch with 30 FPOs and we are helping other farmers in various states to come together and form FPOs.
IIS&SF will also introduce and implement various other models of “Contract Farming” with various Contract Partners like technology partners, insurance partners and resource partners. The creation of partnership and this model will eliminate multiple layers of middle-men and will bring in much better price for the buyer and the farmers, thereby moving a step closer to the realization of the vision of our Prime Minister Sri Narendra Modi to double the income of our farmers.