Page Comparison

This is one in a series of ideas for financing sources which could be a galvanizing offering for farmer group digitization.

Mar 11 Update:

Received this summary of central and state level schemes (in AP and Odisha) relevant for FPOs and for farmer member households.  

Thanks to Rikin for pointing out Farmrise which operates in the US and simplifies the process for farmers to access grant programs like Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Value Add producer Grants (VAPG) from the USDA. See more here.

There are a bunch of government schemes specifically tailored to FPOs. Haqdarshak organizes info on these schemes and makes it available via an API which could be quite useful if we pursue this track. A couple references

API spec:

Central schemes relevant for FPOs

A grant is compelling relative to debt for obvious reasons.

One theme that could be compelling is climate adaptation grants.

One program that was identified as part of our climate research is this Smallholder Grant Programs under GEF. They provide grants to officially registered Community Based Organisations (CBOs) or NGOs and the maximum grant is $50,000. It’s not clear if SHGs or FPOs would fall qualify as a CBO or if there is flexibility in expanding eligibility.

...

While it may not be super interesting to farmers initially, the data would be held not by DG but a “data trust” or “data cooperative” where DG plays a steward role (until there is greater farmer ownership). We can look to then identify ways to leverage this farm activity data for additional use cases.

...