Knowledge exchange and learning visit on the formation of Farmer’s Producer Company (FPC) organized on January 11 and 12, 2023 at Palkot Gumla of Jharkhand where farmers representatives from Anugyalaya Diocesan social service societies, Darjeeling have come to interact with the FPC representatives. Five selected representatives from Anugyalaya DSSS Darjeeling attended the knowledge exchange and learning visit.

Anugyalaya diocesan social service societies is implementing one of the most prestigious programme, “WADI” under the guidance of Caritas India supported by National Agriculture Bank for Rural Development (NABARD) since 2018. A total of 500 most marginalised tribal farmers were supported by the program with Kiwi, Orange, and Citrus for their livelihood income. Inspired by seeing the good harvest from the WADI, farmers of the region would like to form a formal Farmer’s Producer Company to make them more organised for marketing by collectivising the produces.

To enable these farmers on the above concept, Caritas India took efforts by organising a two-day farmers-to-farmers knowledge exchange and learning visit where these smallholders were being provided a platform to share experiences along with the field level documentation, book-keeping, and benefits of forming FPC. Mr Ravi Shankar DDM NABARD along with other stakeholders were present to share and motivate the visitors.

The first-day field interaction with Dharitri Farmer producer Company at Kurum village was very participative, where a total of 85 shareholders from Dharitri farmers producer company joined the interaction. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dharitri FPC along with Board of Directors (BoD) have encouraged the guest participants from Anugyalaya by sharing various benefits received through FPC like as of now, Dharitri has mobilised 536 farmers as a shareholder by investing 1000/- each, managed to raise 5, 36, 000/- as share capital, and mobilised 11 different socio-economic schemes equivalent to 8lakhs rupees in a calendar time.

The representatives also visited the collective farming initiative of Dharitri FPC followed by their office and agriculture implements being used to enhance crop production. Later the visitors were oriented on the documentation of Dharitri FPC and learned about 18 different registers to be maintained for the record purpose.

The second-day in-house meeting focused on the FPC concept, the registration process, and understanding other legalities like AoA, MoA etc. CA Abinay Kumar Singh and Mr Prakash Kumar, Value Chain Expert – ICICI Foundation were the two Resource Persons for the session.

“The two-day knowledge exchange and learning program significantly went well, we thank Caritas India for providing us with the informative learning sessions. Both field and in-house orientation were very interactive and participatory in gaining insight on the process of FPC formation,” shared Mr Bimal, Community Educator, Anugyalaya, Darjeeling.