A glimpse on farmer producer organizations: Retrospects and prospects

In India, small and marginal holdings constituted 86.08% with 46.94% of operational area according to Agriculture Census 2015-16 as against the corresponding figure of 85.01% with 44.58% operational area in 2010-11. Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) can help farmers tackle productivity problems resulting from small farm sizes and encourage collective farming. These are also one means of entrepreneurial options in shifting from traditional to commercial agriculture. In recent years, there has been an increase in support for the establishment of FPOs though various institutions. However, the present problem is to make the FPOs long-term sustainable, viable, and successful. With this back ground, the present review paper attempts to delineate the role of FPOs with respect to technical support, market access and the empowerment of small and marginal farmers in India. It focusses on evolution, institutionalization and status of the Central Sector Scheme (CSS) for formation and promotion of 10,000 FPOs. This study insights into the region wise analysis of number of FPOs promoted by implementing agencies in India. The paper intends to analyze the impact created by FPOs at grass root level, convergence with KVKs, transformation into Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) and challenges faced. As the FPO has been the way forward for entrepreneurship, future strategies for scaling up of FPO promotion by various stakeholders should focus on intense capacity building, forging linkages with the ecosystem, large scale impact assessment of FPOs, branding, replication of successful models, continuous monitoring and visibility promotion through social network platforms.