To support small farmers, UP to rate FPOs on performance

Lucknow: In a first, the Yogi government has decided to rate the Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) — the organizations of farmer-producers that provide technical and marketing support to small farmers — on the basis of their performance and facilitate them accordingly.
The rating, officials said, would induce competitiveness amongst the FPOs, prompting them to perform better.This will also help the seed selling agencies to engage with better performing FPOs. The first such rating is scheduled to be completed by March 31, 2023. The details of the ranking will have to be uploaded on the portal by January 31.
The move also marks the UP government’s bid to arrest the chances of FPOs “flying-by-night” after availing benefits from the government. “We are in the process of preparing a master data of all FPOs on a portal. This would help the state government in keeping a close tab on their functioning. They would be rated as well,” said additional chief secretary, agriculture, Devesh Chaturvedi, while speaking to TOI.
The FPOs would be rated on a 15-point scale, including the number of farmers, number of women members in the organization, their annual turnover, whether the share shoulders were paid dividends, whether any agro-processing unit was set up by the organization and the extent to which the products were branded and sold in the open market.
Officials said that the agriculture department has come up with a dedicated portal named ‘Shakti’, where the FPOs will get registered. Chaturvedi, in a communique sent to all district magistrates, said that the FPOs be encouraged in a way so that they get registered “not only to avail government funds” but also work towards providing input and post-harvest benefits to its members.
The state government would give two weeks buffer time to the FPOs after releasing their ranking. They can utilize this period in proposing steps they intend to take in improving their position. Chaturvedi said that the criteria which formed the basis of FPO’s ranking would be uploaded on the portal to ensure transparency.
The development attains much pertinence against the backdrop of Centre proposing to set up 10,000 FPOs in the country.