FPOs help empower farmers: Collector

Ongole (Prakasam District): Prakasam District Collector AS Dinesh Kumar opined that farmers should come together for their empowerment and utilise Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) as platforms for their sustainability.

He inaugurated the building of Thalluru Ganga Sai Farmers Producers Company Ltd, built by NABARD and an NGO EFFORT at Nagambotla Palem in Thalluru mandal on Monday and distributed partnership bonds to the members.

Speaking on the occasion, the Collector said farmers can get better benefits when they are associated and explained that like DWCRA women groups, farmers would get support from the FPOs. By forming an organisation with farmers' groups, they can receive the latest technologies in agriculture, input supply, value-added services to the produce, market facility and other benefits, he explained. Collector Dinesh Kumar said that the FPOs will also bring economic discipline to the farmers and ordered the village secretariat staff to see every farmer as part of a farmers' group.

District agriculture officer Srinivasa Rao informed that the government supplies tools and machinery on a subsidy to the farmers in the FPOs, which they could use and rent out to other farmers to earn income.

RDO Visveswara Rao, NABARD AGM Venkataramana, APIIC PD Ravindrababu, district horticulture officer Gopichand, LDM Ugandhar, EFFORT NGO ED Mohan Rao, and others also participated in the programme.