While the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) has supported over 4,000 farmer producer organisations (FPOs), the government is seeking increased private sector participation to support more farmer producer groups and link them with markets, Union Agriculture & Farmers’ Welfare Minister, said Radha Mohan Singh at an ASSOCHAM event held in New Delhi recently.
“While many state governments and even the private sector is supporting FPOs, we need to expedite these efforts, we had also called a meeting for the same in the ministry which was attended by top private players including Haldiram’s and ITC,” said Singh while inaugurating the ASSOCHAM Exhibition and Conference on Food Value Chain Partnerships.
Sharing his perspective, ASSOCHAM’s secretary general, Uday Kumar Varma said that food value chains can be more effective when enterprises involved in value chain can agree on a set of mission values like farm viability, farm-land preservation, access to healthy food along with sustainable production practices and set of shared operational values such as accountability, long-term commitment, open and on-going communication and transparency, and use them as a means to differentiate and add value to the products they are offering to the consumers.