By Gargi Parsai
Overcoming challenges of dry land and formidable middle-men, a Farmers Producer Company (FPC) with membership from 23 Telangana villages in Kamareddy district here has notched up a profit of over Rs 5 lakh in the sixth year of its formation, bringing handsome income to its individual growers including women.
The FPC–Kamareddy Progressive Farmers Producer Company Limited (KPFPCL)– did not only empower growers but also effectively addressed agrarian distress in back-of-the-beyond villages in a rainfed, arid zone.
The financial success of the company reflected in the smile of Kadham Laxmibai, the secretary of a mandal who shared with this correspondent as part of a visiting media team here last week, how she, as a member of a Village Association cluster and member of FPC, was able to repay a loan of Rs 1 lakh and was able to marry off her daughters, which seems like a dream to her.
She said her farm income had increased 30 per cent annually as also for other farmers, many of who had started taking three crops in a year. There are no farmers suicides in the district, she told UNI.
Indeed in the last five years, the yields of major crops such as soyabean, maize and paddy have almost doubled enhancing farmers income.
Watershed approach helped recharge of groundwater and ensuring ecological and nutrition security for villagers who were initiated into forming Village Associations (and Village Development Plans) by the Reliance Foundation under its Rural Transformation–Bharat-India-Jodo?initiative in 140 villages in the district.
The plan is to bring 14000 hectares of dry land in the region into cultivable area and so far about 9000 ha including about 2000 ha in Kamareddy district has been made cultivable through various interventions especial in water and resource conservation.
“Our objective is to bring holistic and sustainable rural transformation. FPO is the last-mile connectivity to the market.,” said Rama Krishna Yarlagadda, RF Programme Integrator for the Southern Region.
He said their organisation encourages farmers to form Village Associations. “We don’t tell them what to grow but help them identify their critical challenges be it roads, ponds, electricity, water, farm inputs, machinery, markets and so on.
“They bring their own contributions and do shram daan as well. We ask them to contribute for development of the community as a whole and encourage them to set up a village development fund. We orient then to government schemes and funds and help them to avail funds and services,” he said.
Ashutosh Deshpande, the Project Lead looking after Market Linkage said just recently the RF helped KPFPCL avail a grant of Rs 10 lakh from the Small Farmers Agriculture Consortium. They also help them with licences and certification.
With the financial help, the FPO has moved away from custom hiring of combines and was able to buy their own combine harvesters. They also serve as aggregators for selling produce at the Minimum Support Price to the Civil Supplies Department of the Telangana Government.
For now, depending upon produce it is sold to solvent factories (soyabean), poultry feed manufacturers or rice millers etc.
There are envious middle-men and domestic traders who try to put a spoke but the strength of KPFPCL is the unity amongst its 2213 members who are share holders.
For Amrutha Mohan Rao, a small farmers in Lingampally village, his joining a Village Association was a boon as he was abe to develop his arid land using soil water conservation activities such as trench-cum-bunding, creation of a farm pond and silt application.
He not only started taking two crops in a year but because of fodder cultivation he could raise dairy animals. “I have reduced the cost of cultivation and increased my profit with the use of micro irrigation like sprinklers and drip irrigation.” he told the visiting media persons.
This back-of-the-beyond village has now become a progressive village and attained for itself a panchayat to which the Chairman of KPFPCL Chandar Rao was elected unopposed.
A unique feature of this earlier water-scarce village smart-card operated RO water services to villages at the cost of Rs 3 per filling of a can of 20 litres.
However, the time for baby steps is over. KPFPCL is now eyeing bigger markets and even exports. Chander Rao hopes to increase shareholder farmers from 2213 to 10,000 by 2025 and achieve a turnover of Rs 50 crore annually.
The Foundation, which worked as a facilitator and provided seed money, is ready to bow out as it sees this FPC as “replicable and scalable”. (UNI)
