Appraisal of the Farmer Club Models in West Bengal

Report | Apurba Kumar Chowdhury, K. K. Das, Maria Fay Rola-Rubzen, P.M.Bhattacharya, Roy Murray‐Prior, T. Dhar

Location of research: West Bengal

Summary: The Farmers Club Program began in 2005, with the aim of ‘Development through credit, technology transfer, awareness and capacity building’ and assistance from NABARD and other rural banks, NGOs and KVKs. After 2014-15, the government of India began promoting turning successful Farmers’ Clubs into Farmers Producers' Organisations , which are to be registered under the companies act. Key services and benefits provided by some FPO and FC include: improved access to information and training services; machinery services; improved and cheaper access to inputs, improved access to finance; post-harvest processing and storage; marketing services; and networking services. Most farmers were happy with the benefits they received from their organisations and they are proving a valuable means of scaling out CASI technologies. Some suggest that a small number of members is an advantage in India, but there are examples of large cooperatives as well. If the FC acts more as farmer productivity groups, they are less likely to have sustainability issues, but they will provide less services to their members and not be as effective in providing linkages to services.

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