Institutional innovations in marketing of fruits: A case of Farmer Producers Organization (FPO) of fig in Raichur district, Karnataka

The importance of dry land fruit crops is well known due to their high nutritive value, low cost of production and little care required for their management. However, the small size of marketable surplus of the farmers due to tiny landholdings has led to marketing problems even for fig growers. The size of operational holdings in India is continuously declining with every successive generation. The situation has raised serious question on the survivability of these small holders. In this context, aggregation of the farmers, especially small and marginal farmers, into producer organizations has emerged as one of the most effective means in the recent past to address many challenges of agriculture. Hence, the present paper is an attempt to understand the activities of such of the organizations which have been emerged for the said purpose with the case study approach. The ParisarPremi FPO established on 1^st July 2017 as of now has 1130 members composed of mainly small farmers (50%) followed by medium farmers (30%) and large farmers (20%). The FPO has provided several services to its members like technical guidance, input supply, marketing services, etc. It is worth to mention that FPO would able to generate assets with the support of Government schemes within a short span of three years. The FPO members would able to save in the maintenance cost of fig to the extent of 7.73 percent over non-members due to reduction in the input cost. The improved production technology and better technical knowhow of the member farmers helped in realization of better yield (27.66%) over non-members. Above all the member farmers have sold the fig through different methods like open market, supermarket chain and usage of WhatsApp group for sale of fruits. The FPO member farmers have realized highest net price for the fig sold through supermarket chain (Rs. 72/kg). The organized efforts of FPO lead to supply the produce to higher value markets, which fetched higher net price than any other methods used for fig in the study area. This helped in realizing higher returns for the member over nonmember farmers. Thus, promotion of FPO would bring in better input and output marketing and thereby brings the economic sustainability among farmers.