Collective Co-operative Farming (CCF)

Despite having abundant natural resources, farming in Uttarakhand is facing a lot of challenges thus leading to poor economic growth. Amongst many challenges faced in farming, the major ones include scattered farming, small and marginal landholding, unorganized production of marketable crops, traditional practices of cultivation, lack of appropriate knowledge on technical aspects, lack of value addition to the rural-farm products, lack of institutional marketing, and very limited access to organized markets. Mountain farmers have limited resources and can individually produce only a small quantity of marketable agri-produce, which is not enough to influence the market for optimum benefits. On the other hand, there are a lot of middlemen in the marketing supply chain right from the farmer’s field to the marketplace. There is a lack of business transparency and high transportation costs. Hence, they bear huge losses in the farming business.

To mitigate these challenges, the concept of Collective Cooperative Farming (CCF) was envisaged under UKCDP through its co-operative institutions. There is an immense potential to develop value chain of various mountain-specific crops, supported by institutional marketing of value-added products. Thus, keeping in mind the potential of identified crops based on geographical and agroclimatic conditions of different places in the state, collective cooperative farming (CCF) is being promoted by involving farmers through MPACS.

 

BENEFITS TO MPACS:

• Diversification of working atmosphere, field-expansion of cooperative society through cooperative efforts made by farmers and project stakeholders.
• Development of cooperative society as a business entity/ professional organization taking advantage of structural opportunities of the project.
• Financial strengthening of cooperative society by streamlining the business diversity.
• Development of business competency of the cooperative society.

BENEFITS TO FARMERS:

• Productivity enhancement at commercial scale through collective efforts.
• Farmers will have easy access to advance farming techniques, quality inputs, quality fertilizers, training, collective resources, and capacity development programs for productivity enhancement.
• Farmers will have a great opportunity to avail benefits of better farming techniques, business transparency, and local marketplace of their farm produce.
• Farmer will have easy access to the financial services through cooperative society to meet their day-to-day expenses.