Teaching farming to over 1,000 families in India

Thank you for following the progress of our Agri-Management Services (AMS) programme in West Bengal.  It’s a great pleasure for us to report on how our farmers, with support from donors like you, are cultivating their small plots of land into fertile and productive fields that, in turn, provide a much-needed source of income for the family. 

So what is the story behind FIGs?  What makes them so good for our farmers?

Although our farmers are growing a variety of different fruits and vegetables from aubergine to rice to zucchini, we are yet to witness a crop of fig trees!  In this case a FIG is a Farmer Interest Group – a collection of farmers who, with our intervention, have joined together to form a co-operative group with increased bargaining powers at the markets.  As a group, our farmers can benefit from economies of scale, negotiating cheaper prices from suppliers for their inputs (seeds, fertilisers and pesticides) and commanding higher prices as they sell their produce further afield.  Another important benefit of the FIG is that the farmers are able to open a bank account and take advantage of financial services previously denied to them as individual farmers.  So all in all FIGs are proving to be very popular with our beneficiaries in West Bengal! 

“Since I started with Shivia’s AMS programme my farming business is in profit after so many years of almost no profit at all.  Now I can afford better food for the family as well as save money.  My wife and children are very happy with this!”  Shivia AMS farmer, West Bengal.

We have a total of 683 farmers registered with us on AMS and have formed 42 FIGs, over half of which have opened a business bank account to help manage their income and expenditure. Two of our FIGs have recently been able to join a Central Government crop insurance scheme, protecting their business from the financial loss caused by natural, climatic disasters.  Previous to this, single farmers were likely to suffer catastrophic losses from floods or drought.  As a group, their liabilities are significantly reduced and they are delighted.  We are trying to connect more of the FIGs to the crop insurance scheme as soon as possible.

Our plan is to register another 400 new farmers with our AMS programme in 2016/17, taking the total to over 1,000 AMS farmers.  At this point we will be able to help them form a Farmer Producer Group (FPG), an altogether bigger and more formal organisation that will be eligible to apply for government schemes, subsidies and significant bank loans.

We look forward to reporting on more successes with our FIGs and FPGs in due course. In the meantime, thank you once again for supporting Shivia and our livelihood development programme in West Bengal.  Your donations help to change lives.

The Shivia Team