Supporting Farmer Producer Companies for Value Chain Development in Maharastra (2017)

The project aims to identify the support needed to build climate resilience for small farmers and producers. The key objectives are to: 1) Undertake an institutional evaluation of Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) to highlight the capacity, management, technological, financial, infrastructural and governance gaps; 2) Support FPCs in drawing up business plans that include incorporating climate-resilient crops into cropping patterns; 3) Ensure that FPC’s business plans are of sufficiently good quality that they can be used in negotiating loans with credit providers; and 4) Enable FPCs access financing and credit linkage from banks, financial institutions, donors and government.

IIEC was tasked to 1) Designing the work plan and development of the approach paper; 2) Study of FPCs and value chain actors in selected districts; 3) Benchmarking value chain implementation and gap analysis of pre-selected FPCs; 4) Understand credit providers’ perceptions of FPC risk; 5) Provision of a ‘Rating Tool’; 6) Validate the results of the initial evaluation of FPCs; 7) Sample business plans; 8) Recommendation of strategies for implementation and final report; 9) Develop guidelines for replicating this pilot process; and 10) Training and capacity building.

Funding Agency/Client: Oxford Policy Management Limited