Farmers' Producer Organization

Have you ever met an Indian farmer, especially a small and marginal farmer, who has a business mindset, connecting agriculture with business?
Of late, Farmers’ Producer Organizations (FPOs) have emerged as one of the most effective institutions to address the challenges of the agricultural sector in India, where more than 86% farmers belong to the small and marginal category. It offers them a proven pathway to address various challenges faced by small and marginal farmers today. These FPOs, which combine elements of both cooperative and corporate models, are designed to create an enabling environment by allowing farmer members to participate in agri-value chains through resource aggregation, collective procurement, marketing, and creation of shared infrastructure & services for processing and supply chain management. This enables them to become competitive actors in the value chain and increase the income of their member farmers.

FPO movement in India has been ongoing for more than two decades since the year 2003 and it is still in a growing stage. While it has grown in numbers significantly across the country (more than 50,000 as of March 2025), many of the FPOs are still struggling to achieve sustainability. However, going forward would require innovative interventions and strategies to overcome the constraints that FPOs are facing.

To address the issues, challenges and inherent problems faced by FPOs and farmers’ collectives in India, it is high time to fill the missing links in the FPO ecosystem in a coordinated approach where both FPOs and the promoting institutions, including policy makers, have to come forward and tighten the loose screw to make farmers’ collectives producer-centric, viable and sustainable.
While working and interacting with FPOs and other stakeholders across the country over the last ten years, a few insights and approaches have been discussed in detail in this book based on my experience as follows-

1. FPOs in India – The missing link
2. Know your cluster – Agri value chain mapping
3. Sustainable Business Planning Process for FPOs
4. Marketing Strategy for FPOs- Middle path line
5. Financial Planning for FPOs
6. Dos and Don’ts for Sustainability of FPOs
7. Failure of FPOs- Common Causes
8. Next generation FPOs- FPO grid

Farmers’ Producer Organizations or farmers’ collectives hold immense potential to transform India’s agricultural sector by empowering small and marginal farmers, enhancing their income, and creating sustainable value chains, as they are the growth engine of Indian agriculture in a true sense.

If you are one of the stakeholders in the FPO ecosystem, agri-value chain actors, Government officials dealing with FPOs, policy makers, academician, corporates dealing in the agriculture sector, bankers, NGOs and are interested in understanding the FPO ecosystem, you can not miss the book. Grab your copy now and become a little more resilient to FPO ecosystem in the country.