Future Agriculture Leaders Initiative to expand to 4 more States

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Future Agricultural Leaders of India (FALI), an initiative backed by agribusiness entities to make farming attractive to the next generation, is expanding its operations to states like Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Andhra and Telangana.

FALI has been working in Maharashtra and Gujarat in various government supported schools for more than nine years now, providing technical knowledge and practical experience to students of class 9 and 10 in agriculture, agribusiness and related fields, giving them technical, business and leadership skills.

Plans for the next three years

“We’re starting in Indore in Madhya Pradesh for the next academic year in July. We’re deep in Maharashtra in 21 districts and in five districts in Gujarat. Over the three years, NBA Enterprise Solutions to Poverty, which heads the FALI initiative, we’re starting. Next, we plan to go to Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

FALI currently works with 13,000 students in Maharashtra and Gujarat and attracts more students every year. The majority of parents of FALI students are small farmers of less than 5 acres and raising up to five animals. It has an alumni base of over 33,000 students.

“Many FALI students go on to higher education in agriculture and related subjects and have introduced improved methods on their family farms and villages,” said Barry. The companies participating in the initiative offer training courses and grants to FALI graduates as well as help them incubate their ideas through micro-financing.

Creating leaders

FALI is a Section 8 company incorporated in January 2021 and is led and supported by leading agricultural business entities like Godrej Agrovet, Jain Irrigation, UPL, Omnivore, Star Agri, Rallis India and more. We will expand this initiative to states closer to Maharashtra and then take it all over India. We want more members to be active. The more support we get, the more we will spread across India.” Nadir Godrej, Chairman and Managing Director of Godrej Industries and Chairman of Godrej Agrovet Ltd. said.

Anil Jain, Vice Chairman and CEO, Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd. said: “This initiative is about creating leaders, who can become role models for others in villages and rural areas.” Farming is not only interesting, but it is worth the investment and can be treated as a business. The idea was to bring a completely different perspective to cultivation and we believed that it can only be achieved when you train the young minds from the cultivation family.”

Practical and technical knowledge of agriculture along with business skills are imparted to FALI students during the two years of the programme. “We ask them to come up with new business ideas. We also run a competition on treating agriculture as a business or any of the products and services associated with agriculture. Students who do well get an invitation at our headquarters in Jalgaon, where they get a chance to showcase their innovations,” Jain said.