Small farmers consortium to help FPOs sell their produce in cities

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Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC) has partnered with cooperative body NCCF and public sector entity HIL to help farmer producer organisations (FPOs) sell their produce in cities. As the first initiative, NCCF and HIL will start distributing products of FPOs in the national capital region (NCR) of Delhi, both online and offline.

“NCCF has already a store at a metro station in Delhi where the “Bharat” brand of atta, rice and dal as well as some of the popular products of FPOs are sold. The response is good. Now, it will sell more products through all its outlets as well as mobile vans,” a senior official told businessline. The government hopes that it gets a good response so that the model can be replicated in regional offices of NCCF across the country.

HIL (formerly known as Hindustan Insecticides Limited) is new to partner with SFAC on retailing the FPOs’ products. The company is engaged in manufacturing and sales of agro-chemicals, seeds and recently it also ventured into fertilizers. Sources said that HIL will mostly try to sell those products online through ONDC.

Delivery an issue

“The idea is to connect the farmers directly with consumers. However, delivering the products in quick time is an issue when urban consumers want immediate delivery. There are so many quick commerce companies which are delivering in 10-15 minutes. Though FPOs will not be in direct competition with those, nevertheless NCCF and HIL will play a role of an aggregator having presence at different locations in NCR and will be able to deliver same day,” the official said.

Both NCCF and HIL have released two separate catalogues of products to be sourced from FPOs and already started through ONDC network.

Officials said that FPOs have one disadvantage in delivery due to their presence in rural areas from where they cannot send an item across the country in quick time. Besides, the issue of return of products will also be partially taken care of as the aggregator may not have that challenge since someone else will buy online even if one consumer returns a product, officials said.

Products of both NCCF and HIL include spices, hing, honey, dry fruits from Kashmir, pulses, cold pressed edible oils, saffron, pickles and Chyawanprash among many others.