A Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) at Pasiyapur Janubi village, Chamarwa block in Rampur district, Uttar Pradesh, has just made the lives of 2,000 farmers easier. For years, farmers have had to shoulder huge losses as they had no place to store their fast perishing produce such as fresh vegetables and milk. Because of this, they were often forced to sell their produce at throwaway prices. 

But now, the FPO Rampur Krishak Farmer Producer Company Limited, has set up its own solar-powered cold storage and a silo, providing a safe storage facility for the farmers to store their produce.  

The capacity of the solar -powered cold storage facility is 10 metric tonnes and it has been developed at a cost of Rs 15 lakh. Meanwhile, the silo has a capacity of 100 metric tonnes and has been constructed at a cost of Rs 10 lakh. And, soon, the FPO will also have a mobile cold storage facility, also solar-driven, up and running. 

The cold storage facility and silos are a boon to the farmers in Rampur that is located about 400 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow.

“I grow organic vegetables, and at the moment there is spinach, broccoli, cauliflower and tomato growing in my ten-hectare land,” Devendra Singh, an organic farmer from Bisra village told Gaon Connection. He had to take his produce to an organic market, 27 kms away in Moradabad. He made enquiries at the market and found the price of cauliflower and broccoli was not too good, so he decided to wait. 

Singh used the cold storage facility of the Rampur  FPO to store his vegetables for a week and went to the market when the prices went up. Before the cold storage facility was there, he was forced to sell his produce at whatever price he could get as the vegetables would perish if he waited too long.

“The Rampur FPO along with the district agriculture department  is also planning to start an organic market here and I can sell my vegetables at the right price right here and not travel to Moradabad,” said Singh happily.

“With the cold storage facility, the farmers should be able to expect a fair price for their crop. Many times, fearing their perishable produce will go waste, they sell it at a pittance at the mandi,” Amit Verma, president of the FPO, told Gaon Connection.

 “If the farmer has a system whereby he can hold on to his fresh produce for up to a week or ten days, he can secure himself a better price because by then, the arrivals in the mandi would have come down,” said Verma. “And, that is why we set up the cold storage facility,” he added.

Verma saw the setting up of the FPO as a service to society. The 46-year-old who is an engineer and a management graduate, decided to set up the FPO at Rampur two years ago.   

What is an FPO?

The FPO or the farmer producer organisation is made up of a group of farmers and undertakes all commercial activities related to crop production and farming in an area. It may  have anything from a 100 to several thousand farmers as its members. Through the FPOs, farmers are not only able to bulk buy numerous products like manure, seeds, fertilizers and agricultural equipment, but they are also able to sell their produce in the market by processing the finished crop. In a way, these are private companies based on the cooperative principle.

The Centre also promotes setting up of FPOs in order to provide better prices to the small and marginal farmers for their produce. The Indian government, seeking to double farmers’ income by 2022, aims to set up 10,000 new FPOs in the country by 2024.  

Read: Half the farmers unaware of FPOs, majority of them are small and marginal farmers: Gaon Connection Survey

Stored and saved

“Transporting the agricultural products from the village to the mandi is a key process. Certain produce that are easily perishable, are picked at night and taken to the mandi in the morning; even in that span of time, they sometimes wither,” said Verma and explained how transportation costs added to the farmer’s burden. 

“It costs as much as ten to fifteen thousand rupees to transport produce for a distance of hundred kilometres,” he pointed out. “So a group of farmers came together and set up the cold storage facility with a capacity of ten metric tonnes at a cost of fifteen lakh rupees,” he said.   

“We have also made a silo of hundred metric tonne capacity at the cost of ten lakh rupees, for the farmers to store grains,” Verma told Gaon Connection. Without a silo, again, the farmer was forced to sell the crop as soon as it was harvested and often ended up selling his produce in a hurry at prices way below what the produce was worth. But the silo now made it possible for the farmer to store his grains for a longer duration. 

In addition to the existing silo, five more model silos of 100 metric tonnes capacity each are also being constructed for storing food grains at the Rampur FPO. Grains can be stored in the silos for several years without spoiling. It takes up to ten lakh rupees to build a 100 metric tonne capacity silo, and Rs 20 lakh to build one of 500 metric tonnes capacity. The bigger the silo the less the cost of construction, said Verma. 

Moving ahead

The FPO is also developing a mobile cold storage facility which will run on solar energy just like the permanent cold storage facility already in operation in Rampur. It will also run on traditional electricity and a generator. Solar energy cuts expenditure on electricity which is also limited in villages, Verma pointed out. 

 The mobile unit will be launched soon. It can be attached to a tractor and transported to wherever the farmer wants to take his produce. According to Verma, most farmers owned tractors and even if they did not, someone in their group would have one. “The mobile cold storage will have a ten metric tonne capacity.  It costs approximately ten lakh rupees to make it,” he said. The mobile cold storage facility is yet to be commissioned, but it will be launched soon, assured Verma.

The FPO at Rampur is also cultivating medicinal crops, where its members are  growing lemongrass, moringa, tulsi and then making a variety of products from these.  

“The members of Rampur’s first FPO are an enthusiastic lot,”Aunjaneya Kumar Singh stated, district magistrate, Rampur, told Gaon Connection, “In two years, they have achieved so much and inspired by them, five more FPOs operate in Rampur now. It is a major feat for the district,” the district magistrate stated. 

Read story in Hindi here.