APEDA (the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium recently. It was aimed at bringing in better synergy in the linking of farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and farmers’ cooperatives to the export value chain through capacity building; production of the quality produce as per the requirement of importing countries; creation of infrastructure, facilitating primary and secondary processing in the clusters, and also by linking them to the exporters.
The MoU was signed by Neelkamal Darbari, managing director, SFAC, and Paban Kumar Borthakur, chairman, APEDA. The latter has been focussing on a collaborative approach to bring synergy with such organisations and has been engaged with them for mutually working together in the development of agriculture and allied sectors and its exports for bringing better value to the stakeholders.
The areas of cooperation are as follows:
SFAC will share a list of all clusters in various states with APEDA for achieving scale and aggregation with export orientation.
APEDA and SFAC to jointly work together to link up the FPOs/FPCs (farmer producer companies) with the exporters to achieve the goal and doubling the farmers income as well.
They will work towards capacity development, outreach programmes, awareness programmes and workshops of various stakeholders
They will work together to showcase to the Indian and global market, the products, technologies, processes, knowledge and services by the FPO sector stakeholders through variety of modes as may be identified by them from time to time
APEDA to facilitate certification of organic produce/areas by the FPCs assisted or identified by SFAC
To take-up an agribusiness promotion unit in the North-East and to mentor and handhold the FPOs in the region
The Agri Export Policy announced by the Government of India with a farmer-centric approach suggests the development of product-specific clusters in the country to help improving productivity and quality of the varieties of crops with special involvement of the FPOs.
FPOs are an institutional innovation to help small holders to reduce the cost of produce by procuring necessary inputs in bulk at wholesale rates, aggregation of produce and bulk transport reducing marketing cost, etc., and extend their reach to modern technology and distant markets.
The policy also aims at addressing the obstacles faced by FPOs through organisations like SFAC and state-level organisations to expand the FPO network.
It is expected that with the approach of joint collaboration with the organisations like SFAC, APEDA will be able to reach a large farmer base for improving the production base of agri products quantitatively and qualitatively both for maintaining the consistency of supply and establishing an image of quality supplier in the international market, leading to an increase in the export volume and value and indirectly contributing to doubling of farmers’ incomes.