AgriNation News Network

New Delhi. 30 May 2018

The Ministry of Agriculture, will soon unveil a unique portal that will enable FPOs connect with potential buyers. The Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) has played a pivotal role in mobilising farmers across the country into forming FPOs, which have enabled farmers in enhancing productivity and earning better returns from their produce.

The portal is being developed with the objective of connecting farmers to other stakeholders such as buyers, retailers, exporters, processors and wholesalers. It will serve as a common platform for buyers and sellers to interact with farmers, which in turn will help them earn the right prices for their produce. The portal is first of its kind and is focussed on plugging the information gaps between FPOs and organised buyers.

Explaining the importance of creating market linkages for FPOs, Shri Sumanta Chaudhuri, IAS, Managing Director, Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium said, “Market linkages remain one of the crucial areas for FPOs to emerge as successful enterprises and SFAC has played an integral role in opening up marketing channels for FPOs in India. SFAC will act as a facilitator to link both the stakeholders at a single platform. SFAC will certainly facilitate the process of providing real time information on the portal by FPO and Buyer, where any subsequent trading is to be undertaken directly between FPO and Buyer.”

For long term viability and sustainability of FPOs, credit from the banking system is a must.  SFAC is taking initiatives towards creating credit linkages by providing enabler in the form of Credit guarantee to Banks against their collateral free lending to FPCs.  In this connection, SFAC is targeting individual banks for region-wise funding.

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