• The Government has been promoting the scheme of “National Agricultural Market” popularly known as e-NAM, whereby regulated physical wholesale mandis of different States/ Union Territories (UTs) are integrated on a virtual platform.

    • It is to facilitate online trading of agricultural commodities to enable farmers to realize better remunerative prices for their produce through improved access to market.

    • The e-NAM also facilitates Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) to get access to large number of buyers for selling their produce to increase the income of their farmer members.

    • So far, 1820 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) from various States have been on-boarded in the e-NAM platform.

    • The Government of India has already been implementing the Central Sector schemes of “Formation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs” under which well-defined skill training have been provided for capacity building of FPOs including their skill development in marketing, processing and export.

    • Further, the Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) has been implementing the Scheme for Human Resources and Institution - Skill Development (SHRISD) under the umbrella Scheme namely the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY), from 2017-18 onwards.

    • It is to assist creation of skill infrastructure and development of course curriculum in food processing thereby contributing for overall Human Resource Development in Food processing industry in the Country including that of FPOs.

    • Also, as part of Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MOFPI) has launched an all India centrally sponsored scheme called "PM Formalisation of Micro food processing Enterprises (PMFME) Scheme" for providing financial, technical and business support for upgradation of existing micro food processing enterprises.

    • The scheme aims at supporting Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs), Self Help Groups (SHGs) and Producers Cooperatives along their entire value chain.

    • Furthermore, in order to facilitate export facility for FPOs, the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has taken an initiative to develop a Farmer Connect Portal viz. providing a platform for FPOs/FPCs, Cooperatives.

    • This is to connect with exporters with the key objective to facilitate and integrate the activities of Farmers and aggregators in the form of FPOs with Exporters through the assistance of ICT platform.

    • Around 2360 FPO/FPCs and 2324 exporters have been registered in the portal so far.

About FPOs

To support farmers in various aspects ranging from input procurement to market linkages, Government of India through Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC), a registered society under Department of Agriculture, Cooperation & Farmers Welfare, Government of India, is promoting Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) by mobilizing the farmers and helping them in registering as companies.

To encourage more farmers to set up FPOs, government is providing various assistance to FPOs such as Equity Grant Scheme, Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme through SFAC. In addition, FPOs can also avail assistance under various schemes of the Government of India such as Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure (AMI), Venture Capital Assistance (VCA) and Mission for Integrated Development of Horticulture (MIDH) Scheme for promoting their agri-business activities.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)