Point of Sale (PoS)

Small farmers face difficulties in accessing markets and in acquiring market information. Farmers rarely operate as farmer groups and endure high production costs due to the lack of scale economies. Expensive transport options prevent delivery to the market at a competitive price. Many of the farms are widely dispersed or have bad road conditions making it difficult for buyers to source directly from farmers.

The consequence of the inability to find viable markets has been post-harvest waste. There are insufficient packhouses and storage facilities in rural areas, dramatically reducing the shelf life and quality of the produce. The high degree of information asymmetry, combined with the large number of both producers and buyers operating in rural areas, has resulted in a highly competitive arena.

To mitigate these challenges, the concept of Point of Sale was envisaged. Point of Sales (POS) is a single point that organizes the collection & aggregation of produce, receiving, selling of agri-inputs of high quality as well as other daily needs of farmer members and distributes payments to the farmer, as well as facilitates market information. It is a hassle-free method of marketing for farmers since they don’t need to take the pain of logistics and supply chain individually. This would be a single point for selling agri-inputs & daily needs items (grocery), organizing a collection of produce, and procurement of farm produce at the MPACS level. At PoS, MPACS can invite corporate buyers to seek their services in terms of aggregation and procurement of available agricultural produce and supply of agri inputs from the PoS.

Objectives:

• To create marketing facilities to reduce post-harvest loss and distress sale of agricultural produce.
• To improve the commercial links between producers and buyers.
• To establish market linkages of agriculture- produce at Farm-gate.
• To improve the incomes and livelihoods of agricultural producers and to reduce the income vulnerability of both producers and MPACS.
• To discourage rural-to-urban migration and thereby minimize congestion & other associated problems in the society.
• To create facilities to provide best quality agri-inputs and other daily need items to farmer members at minimum price

Benefits To The Farmers: