Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar urges more farmers to join FPOs

Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday launched a logo for a scheme that promotes setting up of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), and said more farmers should be part of such organisations.

In February 2020, the union government launched a new central scheme "Formation and Promotion of 10,000 FPOs" under which FPOs are formed and promoted with participation of farmers, including small and marginal farmers, who get various facilities.

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"FPO is not merely a company, it is a collective for the benefit of farmers. From seed to market, the aim is to make farmers prosper," Tomar said while addressing the National Conference of Cluster Based Business Organisations (CBBOs) under the FPOs scheme.

"More and more farmers should be part of FPOs," he said.

According to an official statement, the minister launched the logo for the scheme on FPOs.

Minister of State for Agriculture Kailash Chaudhary said farmers should be enthusiastic about joining FPOs.

As per the official data, about 2,349 FPOs have been formed in the last two years under the scheme launched in 2020.

Under the scheme, CBBOs have been provisioned as the professional agency with a critical role to play from mobilisation of farmers, conducting baseline surveys, identification of produce clusters, formation of groups, registration and capacity building to preparation of business plan and execution thereof with assurance to provide the market to the FPOs.

They are also to establish cardinal links with implementing agencies and FPOs.

Representatives of 265 CBBOs empanelled by 13 implementing agencies were invited to the conference where implementing agencies, senior officers from State Governments dealing with FPOs were also present.