Status and Performance of Farmer Producer Organizations in India: An Economic Perspective  (Paperback, Amit Kar, DUM Rao, Manaswi B.H., P. Anbukkani, P. Prakash, Pramod Kumar, R. Roy Burman, V. Lenin)

The farming sector is often stated to be characterized by low level of technology adoption and lack of market access due to fragmented land holding and approach to marketing. The country has tried many approaches to collectivize the farmers like cooperatives, self help groups (SHGs), farmers interest groups (FIGs), farmer producer groups (FPOs), Farmers club, Joint liability groups (JLGs), etc. Among all these approaches the farmer producers organization holds a great promise in terms of provisioning access to technology and markets. A lot of effort has been made towards formation and growth of FPOs. Therefore the book entitled “Status and Performance of Farmer Producer Organizations in India: An Economic Perspective” is an attempt to understand the functioning of FPOs and the impact it has made in improving the access to technology, markets and enhancing the income of the farmers. The book is based on guided academic research investigation from primary data compiled from 120 farmers of two districts of Telangana. The study also used secondary data on number of FPOs formed across states over a period of time. The various econometrics tools like compound annual growth rate, garrette ranking, farm business analysis, cobb-douglas production function, discriminant function analysis, data envelopment analysis, etc. had been employed in drawing conclusions. The FPOs of study area dealt with the production and marketing of organic chilli therefore, it became pertinent to understand the importance of chilli and organic farming in the world and in particular country. The book describes the countries to which chilli and organic products are being exported. It would serve as a guide for the FPOs devise strategies and plans for boosting exports. The book through use of latest econometrics tools has tried to empirically demonstrate the impact of FPOs on technology adoption, improvement in market access and income. The details about the econometric tools has been highlighted in the methodology chapter and also illustrated in detail in appendix chapter. The use of principal component for development of weights for technology has been systematically illustrated in the appendix chapter. The advantages of discriminant function analysis over the logit function has also been described in the appendix chapter. One can easily learn how to use various econometric tools and how to draw inferences from the results. The opinion of the FPO members, officials, promoting institutions has also been used to derive policies to improve the functioning and growth of the FPOs. The book would serve the policy makers and institutions like NABARD and SFAC to develop their future plans and strategies for promotion and growth of FPOs across the country. The FPOs could understand what are their shortcomings and also learn how to boost their performance. The young researchers and academicians can learn how to use various econometric tools to understand the functioning of FPOs.