PRODUCER ORGANIZATION & PRODUCER GROUP

The MKSP has a mandate of creating community-led institutions which works on the livelihood and market domain. There has been community institutions in the NRLM project but their focus has more been in social welfare and community development. The institutions planned in the project are more specialized in working on production and business front. The project is promoting Producer Groups (PG) at the village level which are mainly formed with an intent of developing a business acumen and bring a business orientation in the current livelihood activities of the PG. The PGs will range in membership of minimum 25 memberswith a maximum number based on the interested farmer households who are practicing or are willing to take up the activity in the village but not exceeding 100-125 per village. The members of these PGs will be essentially a shareholder of the Farmers Producer Organization (FPO) preferably under Farmers Producer Company Act, 2002 at the Block or District level. Till date around 200 Producer Groups engaging more than 8000 producers have been formed.

These FPOs in order to manage the aggregation, input sale and processing function will promote business structure called Rural Service Centre (RSC) for the Agriculture and Minor-forest Produce based commodities. For the livestock where the services are more important than market access in Jharkhand’s situation, an Integrated Livestock Development Centre (ILDC) is proposed. This centre apart from selling animal feed would cater to the preventive veterinary services like vaccination, castration etc and would coordinate with the relevant agency for the curative services. The diagram below illustrates the business structures proposed under the project:

The project has around 60000 poor producers under its fold spread in 6 Blocks of 5 Districts of Jharkhand and it is expected that around 60% of the producers may become a shareholder of the FPO. There is a plan to promote at least 1 FPO per Block initially. This will generate huge volumes for the FPOs to help them access bigger markets hence determining better returns. The FPOs initially would deal in multi-subsectors and may eventually become sub-sector specific depending upon the need. This intervention is expected to not only build the business skills and institutional capacities of the producers to operate in the mainstream market but would also create new job opportunities in the locale.