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Farmers Producers Organization (FPO)
Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) has promoted total five Farmers Producers Organization (FPO). Initially KVK has made an attempt to form total 182 farmers groups based on different commodities. The commodities like vegetables and fruits have considered.
Farmers Producers Organization is becoming popular concept in the field of agriculture among farming community because of its importance. However for formation of Farmers Producers Organization minimum 15-20 groups are required in which each group should have 20 members and they should be grower of particular commodity. Presently five Farmers Producers Organization started primary working in the tehsils like Newasa, Shrirampur, Rahata, Sangamner and Kopargaon from Ahmednagar district.
Commodity Interest Group (CIG)
Ahmednagar district comprises fourteen tehsils having more than 1500 villages. Each tehsil is typically known for particular agriculture commodity. The crops like soybean, cotton, redgram, maize, bajra are mainly grown in Kharif and wheat, jowar, bengalgram, groundnut cultivated in rabbi season. Sugarcane is major dominant cash crop grown in all tehsils.
The vegetables like onion, brinjal, tomato, cabbage, cauli flower, cucurbits, potato are produced in the district. Fruits like pomegranate, mango, guava, grapes, sapota, lime, aonla are having considerable area. The flowers like marigold, chrysanthemum, rose are also cultivated in some parts of the tehsils like Parner, Rahata, Sangamner, Akole respectively.
Krishi Vigyan Kendra has laid major focus in improving productivity of these commodities since inception through training, demonstrations and on-farm-trials. The knowledge and skills imparted among the producers.
To organize producers from each commodity, KVK has utilized group organization concept. For this purpose, total twenty commodities were identified for formation of commodity wise groups. Each commodity group contains 15-20 growers. The activities are based on production, credit mobilization and marketing. Collective actions are mainly followed for cultivation, purchase of inputs, information and market network.
Total 182 such groups developed by the Krishi Vigyan Kendra and networked to KVK programmes
Agriclinics and Agribusiness Centers
With 103 million farm families having 165 million ha holdings that are spread over in more than 600,000 villages in 598 rural districts of the country and 1:2000 extension agent-farmer ratio characterizes the extension system prevalent in India. On the other hand the demand for paid extension system is also growing as is evident from the study that indicates 76.5 per cent farmers favouring paid extension services. Further another study reveals that agricultural input dealers are major source of technological information for the farmers among the 22 other sources surveyed by the NSSO in India. The type of technical information sought by farmers in Maharashtra also is very explicit and encouraging for private extension service providers to take advantage of this situation. It indicates that about 53.6 per cent farmers favour for paid services for in-field extension advisory and 22.6 farmers favoured for paid services for accessing plant protection advisory. The demand for such paid services is estimated to be higher in fruit crops, vegetable and floriculture crops.
With this background the Ministry of Agriculture proposed a scheme for establishment of private extension service providers through an innovative model that was named as Agriclinics and Agribusiness Centres� (ACABC) Scheme and was initiated in 2002. The scheme was implemented primarily to boost the efforts of public extension system by bringing in the agribusiness ventures established by successful agripreneur under the ACABC scheme to provide extension support services in the areas of their chosen agribusiness venture. The scheme started with support of Ministry of Agriculture with assistance of National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE) as the national coordinating institution for imparting training and NABARD as the implementing agency for extending the credit based subsidy.
Objective of Scheme
- To supplement the efforts of Government extension system.
- To make available supplementary sources of input supply and services to needy farmers.
- To provide gainful employment to agriculture graduates in new emerging areas in agricultural sector.
The scheme provides a mandatory two months training for agrigraduates and agri diploma holders and further has been revised to include agribased vocational course at intermediate level as minimum eligibility. After the successful completion of the mandatory training the trainees have to submit the agribusiness project proposal for bank finance for which a composite subsidy amounting to 36 per cent for open candidates and 44 per cent for SC/ST and women candidates is extended by NABARD to the agripreneur through the financing bank.
