‘Farmer Producer Organisations Call for Sustained Support’

The conference on ‘Models for Agricultural Development: Experiences of Farmer Producer Companies’ (FPC), has called for continued efforts to strengthen, support and manage the Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO).

The two-day conference, which was jointly organised by the Department of Agricultural Economics, Kerala Agriculture University & Indian Society of Agricultural Economics (ISAE), mooted a national level association to help the FPCs recognize their goals and lead the efforts to improve farmers’ income.

Renowned agricultural economist & former director, National Agricultural Innovation Project Mruthyunjaya said disruptive technologies have to be used to force growth in agriculture. He stressed on the need for more studies on FPCs to lessen the knowledge gap and cause, combine and extend new gains.

R Chandra Babu, KAU Vice-Chancellor said that the formulation of policy recommendations to reinforce FPO network & promoting a vision plan to improve farmer’s income have become very important. Small & marginal holdings make adoption of technologies hard. FPCs will allow small farmers conquer such constraints through optimizing resources.

C Ramasawamy, Former TNAU Vice-Chancellor & ISAE President said that guaranteed income support to growers is a must to uphold agriculture. Many rural economies are stable as they have an inherent comprehensive strategy involving cattle rearing & milk production. Public sector research in farming should be able to make breakthrough technologies for future that depends on AI or Artificial Intelligence, Gene Mapping and so on.

National Coordinator of National Agricultural Higher Education Project, P Ramasundaram pointed out that the present stress in Indian agriculture is not due to famine or low output, but by abundance of produce.

Agricultural Production Commissioner, Deevendra Kumar Singh said FPOs will help in authenticity as well as traceability of products, which will earn and develop consumer trust.