SOA promoting 25 FPOs in Odisha for farmers’ empowerment

Bhubaneswar: The National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) has promoted 67 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPO) in Odisha with Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) being entrusted with the development of 25 of them.

This initiative to promote FPOs was taken to support farmer producer organizations by providing sustainable finance, Ms. Bhabya Anand, Regional Head of NAFED in Bhubaneswar, said on Saturday.

Speaking at a function organised at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAS), SOA’s faculty of Agricultural Sciences, where the proceedings of the National Cooperative Conference in New Delhi attended by Union Minister for Home Affairs and Cooperation, Amit Shah was beamed live for farmers, Anand said SOA had been chosen by NAFED as a Cluster Based Business Organisation (CBBO) at the state level.

The government planned to form and promote 10,000 new FPOs for five years with each FPO to be financed to the tune of Rs. five lakh every year, she said adding at least 300 farmers should come together in a plain area to constitute a FPO.

NAFED, she said, was the nodal agency in Odisha for procurement of pulses and oilseeds.

Prof. D.P.Ray, Principal Advisor to the President of SOA and agricultural expert, Prof. P.K.Nanda, SOA’s Pro-Vice Chancellor, Prof. Jyoti Ranjan Das, Dean (Students’ Welfare), Prof. Premananda Mohapatra, Dean (PG Studies) of IAS and Prof. B.K. Sahu, Dean, IAS, among others, were present.