Farmers, farmer producer organisations (FPOs), and exporters belonging to Coimbatore, Tiruppur and the Nilgiris districts were oriented on the opportunities for scaling up revenue generation through value addition of agriculture products at a seminar conducted on Tuesday by the Department of Agricultural Marketing and Agri Business at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU).
Presiding over the inaugural session, the Coimbatore District Collector, Kranthi Kumar Pati, said agriculture was of importance to policy makers since the intended impact of economic progress could be created at the grassroots level. The State Government was keen on farmers making the most of their agricultural produce through value-addition. Against the backdrop of food surplus situation the world over, the attention of the people had turned to consumption of healthy food. The Collector said he saw opportunities for farmers in scaling up production of healthy organic food substitutes through a cluster approach and export the same.
Subsidy-linked schemes
The Collector encouraged farmer producer organisations to tap the benefit of attractive subsidy-linked schemes such as New Entrepreneur-cum-Enterprise Development Scheme (NEEDS) and Annal Ambedkar Business Champions Scheme. He also released a handbook on guidelines for agricultural produce export development for farmers producer companies and exporters.
The TNAU Registrar, R. Tamizh Vendan, said Tamil Nadu ranked high in Export Preparedness Index, referring to its top position in 2022, by way of registering 24.5 metric tonnes of export of agricultural and value-added products to the value of ₹12,700 crores.
The TNAU, through its Directorate of Agribusiness Development and five business incubation centres across the State, was providing hand-holding support for agri start-ups.
TNAU’s affiliated institutions, Krishi Vigyan Kendras, research centres and centres of excellence have adopted 112 Farmer Producer Organisations, involving them in business transactions through TNAU’s Agricart portal, and providing weekly guidance. This initiative of TNAU was advocated for replication by the Central Government to all other agricultural universities in the country, the Registrar said.
