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With the Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) emerging as aggregators of farm produce, the Agricultural and Processed Foods Export Development Authority (APEDA) has started focussing on capacity building of these entities to help them carry out direct exports.
“There is positive momentum and progress in agri and food export because of the contribution and support from FPOs and FPCs (farmer producer companies). They are working as direct sourcing points and aggregators too. Also, exporters are finding it easy to source directly from FPOS and FPCs. APEDA is doing capacity building and hand holding for them to do direct exports,” said M Angamuthu, Chairman, APEDA.
Thousands of FPOs/FPCs have been formed in recent years across various states and the Government plans to create 10,000 FPOs by 2024.
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701 trained already
“We are targeting over 1,000 FPOs to train them to become direct exporters by March 31 this year. The RCMC (Registration cum Membership Certificate) will be issued along with IEC (Importer-Exporter Code) documents so they can directly export and avail all support from APEDA for doing the same,” Angamuthu said.
So far, about 701 FPOs/FPCs have been trained by APEDA across Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, and Telangana, among others. The contribution of FPOs and FPCs is visible in the increase in demand for agri and food product export from India. The trained FPOs will be exporting millets, horticultural products, and Geographical Indication (GI) products, among others, Angamuthu said.
APEDA has formulated a robust strategy to promote the export of millets and its value-added products to achieve $100 million target by 2025. As a part of Millets Export Promotion strategy, APEDA has also released a comprehensive global marketing campaign assessing India’s potential and accordingly E-catalogued 30 importing countries and 21 millet-producing States. APEDA is associating with Indian Missions in importing courtiers to promote millets and value added products.
Also read:ITC launches Mission Millets to drive consumption and empower farmers
India exports agri-products to over 200 countries and is currently the eighth-largest exporter of agri-products. The exports of agri-products monitored by APEDA grew by 16 per cent to $17.435 billion during April-November in FY23 over the same period as last year’s $15.072 billion. APEDA exports stood at $24.74 billion during 2021-22.
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