The country’s farmer new producer organisations (FPOs) have made headway in boosting their business via official platforms like Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), electronic national agriculture market (e-NAM) and the government e marketplace (GeM).The commercial gains from trading in agriculture inputs like fertilisers, pesticides and varieties of seeds, under a government licensing programme, are also helping them to grow.
A senior official said the financial assistance and marketing support to these collectives, where over 3 million farmers have equities, would continue till FY26. Most of these entities were formed in the last couple of years. Over 10,000 FPOs are currently functional.
The agriculture ministry’s scheme has a budgetary provision of Rs 6865 crore for the five years since FY21.
“A sizable number of FPOs have become financially self-sustainable. “The issue of extension of the scheme would be taken up sometime next year,” an official told FE.
At present over 8000 of these collectives sell unique agricultural products – rice, pulses, millets, honey, mushrooms, spices, and value-added products on the government’s e-commerce platform ONDC. Also, over 4000 collectives formed under companies or co-operative societies are on e-NAM platform while over 200 such entities are on GeM portal.
Andhra Pradesh’s Prakasam district based Madddipadu Farmer producer company (MFPC), since its formation three years back with 1000 members, has reported a sales of Rs 32 crore in 2024-25. It supplies maize and agricultural inputs including fertiliser and pesticides to several companies including Suguna chickens and Uttara Seeds.
“The target for the current fiscal is to reach a sales turnover of Rs 60 crore for increasing sales of 30,000 tonnes of maize and expanding out input business,” Eega Ramakrishna, CEO, MFPC, told FE
Set up in FY21, Maharashtra-based collective Sant Dayanand has clocked a turnover Rs 1.5 crore in 2024-25. This FPO is into cultivation and selling of cereals, pulses, maize, soybean, fruits and vegetables. The collective with its 1,500 members is aiming to achieve sales turnover of Rs 5 crore in FY26 expansion of business through renting out drones for pesticides and fertiliser applications and setting up sorting and grading facilities for vegetables and fruits.
In the last fiscal, Rich Returns, an FPO at Kota, Rajasthan sold chana and garlic papards and millets-based products through Mystore. . In addition, the farmers collective with 500 members have sold fertiliser and pesticides worth Rs 1.2 crore last fiscal. “We plan to expand our business overseas through exports besides catering to orders on Government e Marketplace (GeM) of supplying products,” Hari Om Nagar, business development officer, Rich Returns, said.
Over 3,800 FPOs have been provided with licences for selling seeds while 3,500 entities have fertiliser licenses. Close to 3,000 have received approval for selling pesticides while 700 FPOs have mandi licenses.
Under the agriculture ministry’s scheme, financial assistance up to Rs 18 lakh per FPO is given for a period of three years. The scheme is aimed at enhancing collective bargaining power of farmers through local aggregation and reducing cost of production, and leveraging economies of scale.
In addition, provision has been made for matching equity grants up to Rs 2,000 per farmer member of an FPO with a limit of Rs 15 lakh per collective. Credit guarantee facility up to Rs.2 crore is available for these collectives.
The scheme also entails a credit guarantee facility up to Rs 2 crore of project loan per FPO while Rs 25 lakh per FPOs is provided to cluster – based business organizations for five years to boost marketing of products. In addition, FPOs are being granted various input licenses and dealerships such as seed, pesticide and fertilizers, for conducting input business for boosting financial viability of collectives.
FPOs can also avail financial assistance from various schemes including agriculture infrastructure fund and agricultural marketing infrastructure.