State of the Sector Report 2024- Farmer Producer Organisations in India

The State of the Sector Report 2024 – Farmer Producer Organisations in India (SoFPO 2024) report is an attempt to present the status of the FPOs sector and bring out some critical aspects that the sector and the organizations face.

As a matter of regular practice, the report submits to readers, the sector status, with focus on the number of FPOs that came into existence in the last three years, lists the contribution of Central schemes such as the 10,000 FPOs programme, the support system for the sector – including financial, technical, and institutional. This report discusses advancements and changes underway, besides putting forth some apparent emergent trends. The report also includes a primary survey of FPOs to gauge ease of registration, management and governance structures and systems, adoption of technology for business processes, to name a few. Based on this survey, an index to capture the Ease of Doing Business for FPOs has been developed. This index is the hallmark of SoFPO – 2024.

In addition, the report looks at FPOs from the prism of small businesses and assesses through a few chapters the internal and external factors an FPO needs to exist, survive and enter the growth phase. Comparison and contrasting with the typical small business parameters are expected to indicate the similarities between an FPO and a regular small business, even as the differences highlight the challenges an FPO would commonly encounter. These chapters draw from observations of practitioners, with a few case studies to illustrate the inferences. Institutional support mechanisms and use of technology to create a nurturing environment capture the external factors, while granular issues such as building and strengthening member patronage, desisting from early stage fixed capital investments, establishing one or two sound business lines, and focus on profits are a few factors that come out as internal to the FPO. Further, in other chapters, a few policy perspectives, with allusion to the draft National Policy on FPOs are discussed.

An interview with Shri. Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, Additional Secretary (Marketing), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare, Govt. of India, adds immense value to the report, where Shri. Kidwai shares upcoming policy initiatives that aim to strengthen the FPO movement.