Progression of Farmer Producer Organisations in India

Abstract

Present study was carried out to examine the status and growth of Farmer Producer Organizations across the states in India based on the secondary data collected for the periods 2015–16 to 2020–21. It was found that SFAC and NABARD promoted 3044 FPOs registered in the country. NABARD supported 2168 FPOs (71.22%) and remaining 876 FPOs (28.78%) have been supported by SFAC. Madhya Pradesh has the largest number/share of FPOs accounting to 10.15% of the total FPOs registered throughout the country. The FPOs promoted by SFAC increased at the compound growth rate of 15.22% and those promoted by NABARD increased at the rate of 1.34% per annum. At the country level, the average number of farmers per FPO are found to be 582. In addition, about 50% of the total farmers who are members of FPOs belong to five states, namely Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, West Bengal, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. The region-wise study revealed that central region has the highest average number of FPOs (194.67) promoted by SFAC and the average number of FPOs promoted by NABARD were found highest in southern region (634.5). The variability and CAGR was highest in north-eastern region (39.77% and 26.43%) and eastern region (9.58% and 6.17%) promoted by SFAC and NABARD, respectively. In line with the policy framework of the Govt. of India, the State Governments may introduce appropriate flexible policy to scale up FPO promotion so as to become a self-sustaining commercially viable business enterprise of the farmers’ particularly of small producers.