(Farmer) Producer Companies in India as new generation cooperatives: Case studies of performance and impact from West Bengal, India

Abstract

One of the innovative alternatives to the traditional cooperative structure has been the new generation cooperatives or cooperative companies, known as producer companies (PCs) in India since the early 2000s. This paper examines the impact of PCs on the member farmer livelihoods, which is not well studied, with the help of member and non-member farmer interview survey in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is found that though the PCs were inclusive of small farmers in their membership, the PC interface with members for farm inputs was not very strong and the output linkage was poor, reaching only a small proportion of member farmers. The Sufal Bangla public supermarket franchise by some PCs was found to make a large difference to the PC performance and its impact on member farmers. The small size of membership in most case study PCs hindered the equity size, leading to working capital and market interface constraints. Therefore, it is important to encourage members to contribute more equity and to reward their output linkage.