The Maharashtra Agribusiness Network Project supports the Farmer Producers Organization (FPO) and helps improve the network of post-harvest marketing chains. It also support FPOs that focus on crops which are horticultural.
Highlights
The project supports agricultural as well as horticultural businesses and the value chain of more than 2,00,000 farmers. It helps to minimize food loss. The project connects agricultural businesses effectively through FPOs. In addition, the project also connects post-harvest systems to distribute products. The project also provides financial and credit financial services, related technologies and knowledge as well as risk management tools and market information, and various other essential agro-industrial services. The project is in line with the Maharashtra Government’s Vision 2030.
The main project stakeholders are farmers, rural men, civil society, local authorities, government bodies, women and the value chain operators.
The Asian Development Bank supplied a loan of one hundred million USD to the project. This loan will especially assist the cost chain operators and FPOs. It is to aid three hundred sub projects. This loan has been issued for use to improve sixteen present post-harvest facilities and also to assemble 3 new post-harvest facilities.
Benefits of this Project
This Project will mainly benefit marginal farmers those with less than 2 hectares of land, rural people and agribusinesses. Ultimately, this will help reduce the rural-urban divide in the state. This will help solve the problems of High debt levels, Lack of access to education and health, Underemployment, Discrimination and marginalization, Lack of credit markets access, Imperfect markets lead to lower output, Low human resource base, Imperfect markets lead to inappropriate investment decisions, Less access to services which limits decisions regarding farming practices and technological know-how along with poor access to public irrigation systems and electricity grids.
This project aims to reduce general poverty. It helps the poor by providing them with an efficient post-harvest market chain. This project is primarily aimed at women, vulnerable groups and designated castes. Above all, this project will help improve post-harvest and marketing capacity as well as reduce food loss and increase farmers’ income.
