A senior official of the Horticulture Department has underscored the point that innovations, backed by Farmers Producers’ Organisations (FPO), can play a major role in making agriculture a profitable venture. Kshama Patil, Deputy Director of Horticulture, Project Monitoring Unit, explains that Karnataka has a total of about 400 Farmers Producers’ Organisations, including 99 formed by the department.
Those formed by the department have been trained in various aspects of management through resource institutions. Of the 99, 55 have been working very actively during the COVID-19 situation and have been able to lift about 2,000 tonnes of perishable produce of farmers, she notes. “We have been able to organise only about 1 lakh farmers so far in the form of FPOs. The situatiation will improve further when most of the farmers and taluks are covered under this system,” she feels.
“Agriculture is the only sector where farmer buys inputs at retail prices and sells his output at a bulk rate. The FPOs can help reverse this trend by taking up bulk buying of fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs from the manufacturers and also helping the farmers to sell their produce to consumers directly,” she added.
