Bhubaneswar: The State Government has come up with a new scheme Support to Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) aimed at building a supportive ecosystem for promotion of FPOs in the state of Odisha.
The Government aims to bring 1000 FPOs under its ambit over 5 years from 2023-24 to 2027-28. An expenditure of Rs.313.61 crore has been approved for this purpose. For the current financial year, Rs 39.37 crore has been approved under the scheme.
The scheme objectively aims at benefiting farmers in terms of aggregation of farm produce, value addition, better market access, access to price information and technology and credit linkages.
The proposed scheme will effectuate interventions like promotional campaign of FPOs, operational and handholding support, capacity building and industry exposure, access to finance, marketing support and export linkage, management and governance support to attract/retain professionals for FPO management, establish center of excellence for FPOs, single windows system for FPOs, facilitation of education and research on FPOs and allocation of land on need basis to encourage value addition and processing to achieve the end objective of incremental income of Rs 2000 per month per farmer member.
The Directorate of Horticulture will implement this scheme. The Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment Department has prepared detailed guidelines and regulations in this regard.
At present, about 830 FPOs are functioning in the State, out of which about 314 FPOs have been formed under the Central Government’s initiative to form 10,000 FPOs in the country.
Further, about 320 FPOs in the State have been able to successfully run their own farmers’ associations and generate income for their members.
A State Level Committee (SLC) under the chairmanship of Principal Secretary, Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Empowerment will monitor the implementation of the scheme in every quarter and the Project Management Unit (PMU) under the Directorate of Horticulture will take the responsibility of implementation of the scheme in accordance with the Annual Action Plan.