FPCs / FPOs – Collectives need collaborations

FPOs / FPCs have become the buzzword recently in Indian agricultural spectrum. Presence of a large number of FPCs on the ground and huge thrust on the creation of new FPCs / FPOs in the recent budget has made it talk of the town.

These collectives are being seen as remedies to address a wide range of challenges faced by the agriculture sector. For Central government, these are means of doubling farmers’ income; for state governments, these are solutions to bring farming community out of stress; for developmental agencies, these collectives are platform to show socio-economic impact on ground; and for private sector, FPCs / FPOs are one more channel to increase their outreach for selling (inputs and services) and buying produce (output).

Though there has been considerable experimentation with these new age collectives for more than a decade now, success still looks quite far. Already registered FPCs have not taken off as planned; many of them are closing businesses even before properly starting it while others are struggling to find out a suitable operational and business model.

This trying situation of survival of Collectives (FPCs / FPOs) is a call for collaborations between all the stakeholders. Instead of promoting a FPO / FPC with single line of activity / business / focused crop; an idea which itself limits the business scale and can have longer gestation period (based on crop seasonality and business volumes); why can’t all possible business opportunities for an FPC (considering it as a business platform) be explored. Although, some of them are already doing it.

Synergy Technofin, having worked with over 800 FPCs/FPOs across the country (as FPC promoting agency, Technical support provider, direct marketing facilitators and as FPC formation monitoring agency), is keen to explore and facilitate such collaborations. With our field presence in States of Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and having experience of working in many other parts (North Eastern States, Telangana, Karnataka, Uttarakhand), we can explore various opportunities for partnering among the organisations looking forward to work with existing FPOs.

The idea for creating such collaborations is to create some success cases to be presented as a model for replications.