Focused approach

Targeting specific products will help the agri sector

The agriculture ministry’s novel scheme titled “One District One Focus Product (ODOFP)” is noticeably different from the government’s ordinary developmental programmes because of its several distinct and innovative features. It involves picking a well-known farm product of a district for improving the value chain based on it, from production to consumption. Apart from enhancing the value of the products through processing, the scheme would facilitate upgrading the infrastructure for storage, logistics, and marketing with emphasis on brand building and exports.

The ODOFP, for a change, does not have funds earmarked for it. But it would have access to the resources available under other official schemes, including the flagship farm development programme called the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana, the Paramparagat (traditional) Krishi Vikas Yojana, the Horticulture Development Mission, and the National Food Security Mission. More importantly, these products would be supported by the Rs 10,000-crore PM-FME (Prime Minister Formalisation of Micro-Food Processing Enterprises), launched last year to promote micro food-processing initiatives.

This scheme, thus, marks a welcome paradigm shift in the farm promotion strategy. Instead of spreading the available resources thinly over a larger area, this programme intends to concentrate them in select areas and products having the potential for greater and quicker growth. The intention, obviously, is to converge different developmental programmes and galvanise their synergies to generate additional employment and income in the rural belt. The products in focus under this scheme are those which enjoy considerable goodwill in the market, which can be capitalised upon for the benefit of all stakeholders, including producers, processors, traders, and exporters. These products, moreover, are worthy of being the brand ambassadors for the districts where they grow or are traditionally made or manufactured. The better-known instances are oranges of Nagpur, litchi of Muzaffarpur, and ash gourd (Petha) of Agra. Such products, belonging to agriculture, horticulture, poultry, dairy, fisheries, bee-keeping and other sectors, have been marked out for all the 728 districts in the country. Their promotion would be through the cluster approach, which allows enterprises to use the common infrastructure of support services to save on costs. The state governments, too, are expected to support the ODOFP through their ongoing schemes. The Centre has set a target of exporting goods worth $60 billion under this scheme by FY22.

However, a successful implementation of the ODOFP would require unfettered marketing with mutually agreed upon but legally validated linkages between the producers and their processors, traders, or other end-users. But this scheme has, perchance, come at a time when the new laws concerning agri-marketing reforms have been put on hold and many farmers have been brainwashed not to trust the private sector. The government, therefore, needs to take the farmers or the producers of the goods into confidence by explaining their benefits and allaying their misgivings, if any. It would also have to nudge the states to tweak their marketing laws to allow out-of-mandi transactions between farmers and the private purchaser of their produce.