Livelihoods | Commodity Aggregation

To make farming viable in India, we need to ensure remunerative prices for small and marginal farmers who are otherwise forced to sell most of their produce in local markets at very low prices immediately after the harvest. Through our SHGs, over the last four years, we have facilitated an initiative to help farmers aggregate their produce and collectively sell in bigger markets at a time when they can get a better price. A striking feature of this initiative is that funds have been almost entirely mobilised by the SHGs from mainstream banks on the strength of their own corpus. This is an initiative by the people based on their own institutions and capital. This has a significant impact on the empowerment of women, who play a crucial role, be it in fixing the price, ascertaining quality or in making payments through banks. The programme has extended to pigeon pea, soyabean, gram and wheat growers, with the value of aggregated produce being nearly Rs.10 million in 2009-10.