The government has sought the participation of the private sector in supporting farmer producer organisations (FPOs) and linking them with market, Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh said on Thursday.

“While many State governments and even the private sector is supporting FPOs, we need to expedite these efforts. We recently called a meeting for the same in the ministry, which was attended by top private players including Haldiram’s and ITC,” Singh said while participating in an Assocham event.

The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard) is already supporting over 4,000 FPOs across the country.

Farmers cannot get adequate price for their produce without value addition and focusing on value addition, processing, end-to-end management, input and output management, and marketing would go a long way in realising the government’s commitment to increasing farmers’ income, he remarked. Uday Kumar Varma, Assocham Secretary-General, in his speech said food value chains can be more effective when enterprises involved in value chain can agree on a set of mission values like farm viability, farm-land preservation, access to healthy food along with sustainable production practices and set of shared operational values such as accountability, long-term commitment, open and on-going communication and transparency, and use them as a means to differentiate and add value to the products they are offering to their customers/consumers.

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