Does Participation in Farmer Producer Organizations (FPO) Help Boost Farmers’ Income in India?

Abstract

Using secondary data from the National Association of Farmer Producer Organizations, and the National Sample Survey’s (77th Round Survey) Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households (2018–2019), this article analyses the growth of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) over the last two decades. It also examines farmers’ participation in the FPOs and the factors that restrict the poor and marginalized farmers’ participation in these organizations. This study reveals that despite the remarkable growth of FPOs and the central government’s awareness mechanism, farmers’ participation in the FPOs is still quite dismal in India. There exists a host of factors, including a farmer’s education, gender, age and the size of operations, training and skill orientation, awareness of the minimum support price, and so on, which influence their decision to participate in the FPOs. Moreover, since the FPO participation in India is only limited to ‘technical advice’ and ‘input procurements’, instead of ‘marketing or sale of the final produce’, it is argued that demand-driven farmer welfare schemes would have been more useful for raising farmers’ income rather than supply-side interventions like the FPOs.

JEL Codes: Q12, Q13, Q18