APEDA signs MoU with SFAC

Agri Export Policy announced by Government of India with “Farmers’ Centric Approach” suggests for developing product-specific clusters in the country to help improving productivity and quality of the varieties of crops with special involvement of Farm Producer Organizations(FPOs).

FPOs are an institutional innovation to help smallholders to reduce cost of production by procuring necessary inputs in bulk at wholesale rates, aggregation of produce and bulk transport reducing marketing cost etc. and extend their reach to modern technology and distant markets. The policy also aims at addressing the obstacles faced by FPOs through an organisation like Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) and State level organizations to expand the FPO network.

APEDA has been focusing on a collaborative approach to bring synergy with such organizations and has been engaged with them for mutually working together in the development of agriculture and allied sectors and its exports for bringing better value to the stakeholders.

APEDA has been in dialog with SFAC for linking of Farmer Producer organizations, farmers’ cooperatives to the export value chain through capacity building, production of the quality products as per the requirement of importing countries, creation of infrastructure, facilitating primary and secondary processing in the clusters and also by linking them to the exporters.

To bring in better synergy in the activities, APEDA has signed MoU with SFAC on 18th March 2020.  The MoU was signed by Ms. Neelkamal Darbari, Managing Director SFAC and Mr. Paban Kumar Borthakur, Chairman, APEDA.

Areas of cooperation:

  1. SFAC to share list of all clusters in various states with APEDA for achieving scale and aggregation with export orientation. APEDA and SFAC to jointly work together to link up the FPOs/FPCs with the exporters to achieve the goal and doubling the farmers income as well.
  2. To work towards capacity development, outreach programs, awareness programs and workshops of various stakeholders.
  3. To work together to showcase to the Indian and Global Market, the products, technologies, processes, knowledge, and services by the FPO sector stakeholders through a variety of modes may be identified by them from time to time.
  4. APEDA to facilitate certification of organic produce /areas by the FPCs assisted or identified by SFAC.
  5. To take-up an Agri-Business Promotion Unit in the North East and to mentor and handhold the FPOs in North East.

It is expected that with the approach of joint collaboration with the organizations like SFAC, APEDA will be able to reach to a large farmer base for improving the production base of agri products quantitatively and qualitatively both for maintaining the consistency of supply and establish an image of the quality supplier in the International market leading to increase in export volume and value and indirectly contribute to doubling of farmers’ income.

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