Relevance: Prelims/Mains Economy: Agriculture
Why in news?
- The Centre approved a scheme for formation and promotion of 10,000 new farmer producer organizations (FPOs) in the country with budgetary support of Rs 4,496 crore by 2024.
- Additional amount of Rs 2,369 crore will subsequently be used for hand-holding of these FPOs during 2024-25 to 2027-28 period, taking the total size of financial assistance to Rs 6,865 crore.
Key highlights:
- The FPO helps small and marginal farmers join hands to scale up their farming operations for better access to quality input, technology, credit and market through economies of scale. It also helps them realise better price of their farm produce.
- Currently, there are over 3,000 FPOs in the country with majority of them being supported by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard).
- This number is always considered quite low, considering a fact that the total marginal and small farmers, having landholding size of up to five acres, account for over 85% of total farmers in the country.
- Support to each FPO to be continued for 5 years from its year of inception.
About:
- Under the scheme, the minimum number of members in FPO initially will be 300 in plain areas and 100 in north-east and hilly regions.
- Priority will be given for formation of FPOs in aspirational districts in the country with at least one FPO in each block of aspirational districts.
- Though the programme is open for all farmers irrespective of size of their landholdings, it will primarily benefit small, marginal and medium farmers if they come on board and scale up their operations.
