Scaling up of Farmer Producer Organizations in India

Abstract

In developing countries in Asia and Africa average size of landholdings are generally less than 2 hectares compared to about 300-400 hectare in developed countries. Small landholding farmers are facing different constraints due to their small size of cultivatable lands. The problems are ranging from lack of economies of scale in field operations, small size of production and marketable surplus, which are uneconomical to market, less scope for farm mechanisation and value addition, less scope for investments in large machinery. All these resulted in higher costs per unit area and low profitability. Hence, developing countries across the world are encouraging Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs) to overcome small size of landholdings and to increase scale economies.