Govt engages farm cos to boost output to meet food security targets

In order to push production of pulses and oilseeds in the country to ensure adequacy  under the Food Security Bill, the government has started focusing on the farmer producer organisations for exclusive production of critical crops like pulses and millets.

This will be under technology mission for oilseeds and pulses owing to its inadequacy to cater to domestic demand. A grant of Rs 50 crore has been allocated to small farmers’ agri business consortium, (SFAC). SFAC is a society exclusively promoted for mobilizing FPOs.

Over and above the general outlay under the mission to boost the production, this project for promotion of FPOs is intended to develop value chain of pulses and millets. According to officials, the project not only intends to boost production but also engage FPOs in marketing from farm gate to the market to cut down the transaction cost, thus help FPOs to develop the entire value chain .

To support the FPOs engaged in pulses and millet production, the nodal body SFAC has been mandated for price intervention activities to buy the produce from the farmers if the ;prices fall below the minimum support price. This mandate of SFAC is in addition to the conventional procurement agencies like NAFED, CWC and NCCF etc.

The project implementation is for a period of three years  from 2013-14 to 2015-16 for mobilising 106 FPOs exclusively for developing pulses and millet production.

FPO is  company set up by   farmer producers of agricultural commodities. These FPOs will be promoted by the farmers,  run by the farmers and for the benefits of the farmers. The objective of the FPO is to improve returns to farmers through collective inputs purchase, collective marketing, and processing, increasing productivity through better inputs, increasing knowledge of farmers and thus ensuring quality. According to officials, the basic objective of FPO concept is to link small farmers to technology as well as to the markets in association with private, corporate or cooperative sector and if necessary, by providing backward and forward linkages. That is where the need comes to bring in corporate structure to induce governance and monitoring.

 
Under the government procurement scheme,  NAFED, CWC, SFAC, NCCF are the Central Nodal Agencies for procurement of oilseeds & pulses under Price Support Scheme (PSS).  In the current year, meanwhile  the  National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) has started procurement of many oil seed and pulses crops after the market prices of many of them have crashed below the minimum support price. This is under the price support scheme of NAFED.

Already 2.33 lakh metric tonne of groundnut has already been procured from Gujarat and Rajasthan as the market prices are ruling below MSP of RS 4,000 per quintal. The market prices are ruling in the range of RS 2,955-3,000 per quintal. The prices of gram and tur are ruling around Rs 2,500-3,000 per quintal and Rs 3,900-4,000 per quintal as against MSP of Rs 3,000 per quintal and Rs 4,300 per quintal respectively. However market data shows that prices of tur and gram have gone up to around Rs 6,000 per quintal and Rs 3,500 per quintal in far flung areas.

Price of sunflower is ruling around Rs 2,800-3,500 per quintal as against the MSP of RS 3,700 per quintal. The procurement is mainly going on in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh, said sources. Many crops of oilseeds and pulses are ruling below MSP due to bumper crop and flat demand. Moreover in oilseeds, much of the domestic edible oil demand is met by cheap imports of soybean refined oil.