National workshop on Strengthening Farmer Producer Collectives- organised by ISEED in collaboration with APMAS, NAFPO and Green Colleges on 7th March, 2019, IRMA

About the workshop

This national workshop on "Strengthening farmer collectives" was organized by IRMA's incubator, ISEED in collaboration with APMAS, NAFPO and Green Colleges on 7th March 2019. This workshop sought to:

  • Think through and suggest directions for the next few years based on synthesizing some of the key stakeholders’ insights.
  • Strengthen coalitions for more effective sharing on specific challenges being faced by FPOs by thinking together. This relates to the quantum of support or investments, challenges in augmenting capacities of both FPOs and the resource institutions.
  • Have focused discussions on current institution-building attempts and the state of research on FPO.
  • Provide specific ideas for future collaborative work nationally as well as regionally (in Gujarat and neighboring states).

Under the Green Innovation Centre Programme and with SkillGreen, an incubation of WHH (Welthungerhilfe) and NSFI (National Skills Foundation of India), a trainers’ manual has been developed as per the ASCI (Agriculture Skill Council of India) framework. Facilitation methods for creating learning sessions for participants - mainly FPO BoDs and staff, have also been piloted. This "Open-Source" and "Modular" manual was released at the conference.

Workshop resources

Spread over a day and six sessions with over 15 different speakers, the national workshop saw a rich set of discussions on what was required to strengthen farmer collectives in terms of training, institution building, and policies. This section provides a glimpse into the speaker profiles and the ideas that they shared during the workshop.

Concept note

Inaugural session

Institution Building in FPOs

Strengthening collectives: Markets, Institutions and CBO perspective

FPO Financing – Challenges and Opportunities

Policy and Guidelines for FPOs 2.0 : Strengthening the FPO network and policy

Release of working paper titled "Farming Futures : An annotated bibliography on Farmer Producer Organisations in India"

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