FPO Workshop with DG and Skillgreen

Digital Green and Skillgreen hosted a workshop with FPOs in Andhra Pradesh early Dec 2021 to identify which sort of topics would be most impactful for video trainings.

Sharing here as it gives a glimpse to some of the topics top of mind for FPOs in AP and can serve as a reference for the consultations we plan to do over coming months with farmer groups on the FDN.

Highlights:

• “A total of 22 participants attended the workshop - 8 BOD members, 4 CEOs and 10 were staff of the promoting organisation Velugu and Jattu. 3 persons from Digital Green also participated and assisted in the facilitation of the workshop”

• “The participants were then asked to share 1 challenge / problem being faced by their FPO. The issues shared by the participants can be broadly bucketed into the following:

  • Marketing: Marketing at the right time for better realisations. Where to market, whom to market to and how to market.

  • Infrastructure: Access to infrastructure like godown, machinery, cold storage, ripening chambers, etc

  • Value addition: How to value add for better price, packaging and branding.

  • Support of BoDs and farmers: Less support of farmers to FPC. Weak BoDs, not aware of FPO processes.”

• In a joint call, post the workshop, DG and SGG team finalized the content topics and deliberated upon the areas that each topic will cover. It was agreed that the target group for the video would cover farmers - both shareholders and non- members, in addition to the BODs. The video content will be developed from the perspective of the farmer and look at covering existing challenges of FPOs wrt getting shareholder farmers to engage with the FPO as well as the mobilisation challenge being faced by new FPOs

  1. Role of Farmer in a FPO (content to cover the below aspects )
     i. Role of farmer as an individual / shareholder - from the perspective of farmer, both member / non-member. Importance of share capital -why are they paying share capital, what happens to the share capital and how is it utilised, why be a member, benefits of being a member and being part of the FPC institution / the FIG.
     ii. Role of farmer as part of FIG.
     iii. Role of farmer as a BOD (criteria for selection of BoD & expected roles and responsibilities of
     BoD, good practices wrt tenure of BoD, focus on democratic process in selection of BoDs).

  2. Identifying potential business to pursue by FPO (content to cover the below aspects)
     i. Using the value chain to identify potential business opportunities.
     ii. Identifying sources of business in the value chain.
     iii. Where is the current market and where else can the market be?
     iv. Identifying sources of profits in the value chain.
     Bring out aspects such as - for a farmer business is across the value chain, encourage discussions on the opportunities in the value chain and not think only in terms of production/ harvest- expose them to the entire value chain. Trigger thoughts on the possibilities- maximise profit

  3. Components of Business Model Canvas (content to cover the below aspects)
     i. Various components in a business
     ii. Putting together in a canvas
     iii. Identifying potential concerns / risks in running a FPO

Open