2 weeks Ago
The government has started a weekly webinar connecting farmer producer organisations (FPOs) with corporates in order to bridge the gap between production and marketing. In the first online session held Thursday, the government roped in Mother Dairy which shared its plan to provide FPOs necessary support in selling soyabean and mustard. Moderated by Maninder Kaur Dwivedi, Additional Secretary in the Union Agriculture Ministry, the webinar registered participation of nearly 5,400 FPOs out of 10,000 registered under a scheme launched three years back.
Assuring that the webinar will be a weekly event in the coming days with different topics, she said the main objective is to raise farmers’ income and the move to connect them with processors and exporters will help them in sustaining the business model. Mother Dairy’s Managing Director Manish Bandlish said under the pilot project, which the company has decided to roll out in April, it aims to procure 15,000 tonnes of mustard from Alwar and Bharatpur districts of Rajasthan through a local FPO Sakhi, and those oilseed will be processed since there is already a plant in Alwar. The mustard oil will be sold by it under its ‘Dhara’ brand.
Mother Dairy sells around 2,50,000 tonnes of edible oils per year where the share of mustard and groundnut oils is 60-70 per cent. Bandlish said the procurement is scheduled to be done during April-June while another 3-5 months will be required to analyse the pilot project so that an expansion plan is chalked out before April 2026. He said, as per the Mother Dairy’s parent organisation National Dairy Development Board’s plan, the company will buy only mustard in Haryana and Gujarat, only soyabean in Maharashtra and both mustard and soyabean in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
When a Gujarat-based FPO asked when would it be launched in the State by Mother Dairy, Bandlish said it can register now so that a survey is done in 2-3 months and when the expansion happens the FPO can join as a value chain partner (VCP). Addressing the FPOs, Agriculture Secretary Devesh Chaturvedi said to form an FPO is relatively not difficult. But, the crucial aspect is to keep the FPO alive as much as possible, to connect it to the farmers, and to move its the sustainable business forward, he stressed.
To move. That is. “Keeping this challenge in mind, we have started this phase, and we will connect with these FPOs though the webinar,” he said.
The objective will be either to disseminate some scheme information to the FPOs, clearly highlighting what is the objective of the scheme and how FPOs can be associated, he said. Further, he also said the private sector or the PSUs of the government or the cooperatives who want to help in marketing, or want to connect FPOs with something new, with new technology, or want to provide some services, the government would reach out to such people. “We will reach out to the people who are doing a good job in this field and we will get them to talk to you,” he stressed.
He appealed the FPOs to increase their membership that will happen only when the farmers will be able to see some value-addition or some benefits of joining that will also send a message to other farmers. He cited the instance of farmers complaining about buying inputs at retail rates and selling their produce at wholesale rates. But, Chaturvedi suggested that can be changed if an FPO source the inputs directly from a company, which normally pays a margin of 20-30 per cent to the retailers, pass on some 10-15 per cent discount to its members while selling at market rates to others.
The secretary also said he would ensure successful FPOs are also invited to the webinar to make presentation so that other FPOs get encouraged and motivated. Comments.
