Small Farmers' Agribusiness Consortium to Launch Online Platform for Farmers to Connect with Potential Buyers

In order to further strengthen its efforts to create effective market linkages for Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) across the country, the Small Farmers' Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) jointly with FICCI will launch a unique online portal which will enable FPOs to connect with potential buyers. SFAC, a specialised agency under the Ministry of Agriculture, has played a pivotal role in mobilising farmers across the country to form FPOs, which has enabled farmers in enhancing the productivity and earning better returns from their produce.

Explaining the importance of creating market linkages for FPOs, Shri Sumanta Chaudhuri, Managing Director, Small Farmers? Agribusiness Consortium said, "Market linkages remain one of the crucial areas for FPOs to emerge as successful enterprises and SFAC has played an integral role in opening up marketing channels for FPOs in India. SFAC will act as a facilitator to link both the stakeholders on a single platform. SFAC will certainly facilitate the process of providing real time information on the portal by FPO and Buyer, where any subsequent trading is to be undertaken directly between FPO and Buyer."

The portal has been developed with the objective of connecting farmers to other stakeholders such as buyers, retailers, exporters, processors and wholesalers. It will serve as a common platform for buyers and sellers to interact with farmers, which in turn will help them earn the right prices for their produce. The portal is first of its kind and is focussed on plugging the information gaps between FPOs and organised buyers.

For long-term viability and sustainability of FPOs, credit from the banking system is a must. SFAC is taking initiatives towards creating credit linkages by providing enabler in the form of Credit Guarantee to banks against their collateral free lending to FPCs. In this connection, SFAC is targeting individual banks for region-wise funding.

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