Among several other activities including consulting in livelihoods and value chain promotion, M-CRIL is also engaged in promoting Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) and it is one of the key activities of M-CRIL to generate sustainable economic benefits to smallholders. M-CRIL as a cluster-based business organisation (CBBO) for the Formation and Promotion of 10,000 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) scheme, Government of India, is currently engaged in promoting and building capacity of 37 FPOs with 20,000+ smallholder farmers across various states of India with support from SFAC India, National Cooperative Development Corporation (NCDC) and Sikkim Organic Farming Development Agency (SOFDA), Govt. of Sikkim.
We are pleased to share the key achievements and progress made by several Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim, Bihar, and West Bengal in India, with support and guidance from M-CRIL. The FPO promotion work of M-CRIL is managed by a core team consisting of Abhishek Anand, Ajay Kumar, Vinay Srivastava, Rajesh Gupta, Shashi Mani Gupta, Shashi Bhushan, Kavindra Nath Shukla, Subhash Chandra Dubey, Saroj Rai, Rahul Raj and several other team members, under the leadership and guidance of Ashok Kumar, Deputy Managing Director at M-CRIL.
We are pleased to share the key observations that have emerged from the assessments and ratings of 5 Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs). These assessments were conducted by M-CRIL and commissioned by the Tamil Nadu Rural Transformation Project (TNTRP) also known as the Vaazhndhu Kaattuvom Project, managed by the Government of Tamil Nadu, India.
M-CRIL's key observations emerging from the assessments/ ratings of 30 Farmer Producer Organizations (#FPOs) across several Indian states. These assessments have been commissioned by agencies including the The World Bank, Rabo Foundation and SMART Project, Government of Maharashtra (GoM).
M-CRIL is conducting a training workshop for the Water.org team on the Water Credit Sustainability Tool (WCST), which it also helped co-develop earlier. The objective of the workshop is to train their program managers understand and evaluate the WASH credit portfolios of their partner FSPs using the tool. The tool helps partner institutions assess the profitability of their WASH portfolio and provides inputs for decision making on improving sustainability of WASH portfolio.
Credit Union Keling Kumang or CUKK was established in 1993 in West Kalimantan province of Indonesia. CUKK offers financial services including credit, savings and social protection against contingencies to rural communities in West Kalimantan. CUKK is an active member of the association of credit unions in Indonesia and has been a long time endorser of the Client Protection Standards, a set of globally accepted standards necessary for minimum care of clients of financial services providers.
M-CRIL is pleased to engage with UKaid Sakchyam Access To Finance Programme in Nepal for conducting Client Protection Principle (CPP) Certification assignment of four microfinance organisations as the first ever Client Protection assessments in Nepal. As a part of the Smart Certification process, field assessments of four partner MFIs (Chhimek Laghubitta, Unique Nepal, Kisan Cooperative and Sahara Nepal SACCOS) of UKaid Sakchyam were conducted by two teams from M-CRIL recently. The assessors visited a total of 9 branches and observed centre meetings where they interacted with the members of the MFIs.
Aadarsh Farmer Producer Company Limited promoted and supported by M-CRIL/EDA and based at Kurhani, Muzaffarpur is owned by marginal farmers from Kurhani block, Muzaffarpur (Bihar). The FPC established an agricultural input retail shop in January 2016 to sell various authentic agricultural inputs at reasonable prices to farmers. The input shop sells inputs including urea, DAP, compost and seeds of various crops. Other input shops sell various inputs to farmers at higher prices and these inputs often are not available when farmers require. The FPO after obtaining necessary licenses from state departments to sell agricultural inputs started selling these inputs. The overall objective of the FPO for selling quality inputs was to reduce cost of crop production thereby increasing farmers’ returns.