Performance of Farmer Producer Organisations in Rajasthan: An Empirical Assessment

Abstract

India is predominantly an agrarian economy. According to the recent Economic Survey (2021–22), agriculture and allied sectors continue to be the mainstay of the Indian economy as it is the largest employer of the working population and contributes about 19 to the total gross value added of the country in 2021–22. Unlike the agriculture system in Western Europe, Indian agriculture is dominated mainly by small and marginal farmers, accounting for more than four-fifths of the total landholding size. More recently, due to government intervention, many strategies, including agri-business models, have been developed to tackle 384the marginalisation of farmers by bringing them under one umbrella. With the recommendation of a committee headed by YK Alagh, the formation of Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) has become a reality by incorporating a special provision in part IXA of the Companies Act, 1956. In this context, our attempt in this paper is to evaluate the financial performance of FPOs registered in Rajasthan.