Federation of farmer producer organizations (FPOs) for linking farmers to market in India

India has witnessed an impressive growth in agriculture sector for the past five decades. It has achieved self- suffciency in the production of food grains, horticulture and allied sector commodities. Moreover, India is a leading exporter of commodities like basmati rice, wheat, maize, raw cotton, marine products etc. The analysis of the parameters at macro level reveals a promising scenario of these achievements. However, when it comes to micro level, in spite of these achievements, few challenges are being faced by the farming community related to postharvest management, access to domestic as well as international markets, non-availability of modern infrastructure, broken value chain, lack of economies of scale and so on. These challenges are more pronounced among small and marginal farmers who constitute 86 per cent of land holdings in the country. This kind of situation calls for overcoming such challenges by having organized supply chain management with an emphasis on marketing. From time to time, government has made efforts to create an appropriate institutional mechanism to solve these problems. However, institutional mechanisms like formation of cooperatives, producer companies have addressed few of these issues to some extent and are confined to few regions. Off late, a new generation tool of aggregation of farmers into Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) is emerging as an effective tool which is capable of addressing challenges faced by the farmers’ especially small and marginal holders. Hence, there is a need to create awareness among rural people about the role played by these FPOs in the management of finance, marketing, processing, technical and welfare services etc. There are several schemes and policies implemented by Government of India. However, in order to avail the benefits under various state and central sector schemes as well as to effciently tap the target markets, these FPOs which are the basic aggregation models can be integrated into a federation to make it more effective. Several attempts have been made to form federations of FPOs in India which were proven to be successful in enhancing farmers’ income. These federations are facilitating farmers to inculcate business culture and also helping them to comply with legal issues which are faced by majority of FPOs in India. Besides, large scale aggregation is leading to economies of scale and thus leading to reduction in cost and increase in bargaining power.