UMADEVI, KVEDASRI, RAVADA2019-02-142019-02-142018http://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810094950D5618Smallholder agriculture is argued to remain important for economic development and poverty reduction in developing countries, but its development is challenged by the need for institutional innovations to overcome market failures. There is a renewed interest from donors, governments and researchers in cooperative producer organizations as an institutional vehicle to improve smallholder agricultural performance, particularly through improved market participation. Smallholder producers participation in market-oriented production holds potential for diversifying their incomes and increase agriculture productivity, hence promoting food security and poverty eradication. With the numerous farming problems in developing countries, low agricultural productivity has negative effect on the economic welfare of the rural population. Farmers organizations have been suggested as a key tool to improve the living conditions of the resource-poor farmers in developing countries. Farmer groups are important institutions for the transformation of smallholder farming, increase productivity and income, thereby reducing poverty. Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs) are a legal form of the company and according to 2002 Act passed in parliament, only farmer – producer can become member of FPOs. In the Indian context, the role of farmer organizations is to help smallholder farmers specifically, improve their position in the emerging value chains. FPO helps the farmers in production, harvesting, processing, procurement, grading, pooling, handling, marketing, selling and export of primary produce of the members or import of goods and services for their benefit. FPO renders technical services, consultancy services, training, education, research and development for the promotion of the interests of its members. Keeping this in view, the present study entitled “A Study on Performance of Farmer Producer Organizations in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh” - was taken with the following objectives. 1. to study the structure, conduct and performance of FPOs in Krishna District 2. to identify the factors influencing performance of FPOs 3. to analyse the impact of FPOs on farmers’ economy 4. to identify the problems faced by the FPOs and suggest measures to improve functioning of FPOs Krishna district has been selected purposively for the research study as it has more number of functional FPOs in all sectors i.e., 16. Out of 16 Registered and functional FPOs in the district, two FPOs with maximum membership and two FPOs with minimum membership were selected purposively. Eighty FPO member farmers constituting twenty member farmers from each village selling their produce to the FPOs and forty non – FPO farmers constituting ten non- FPO members from each village selling their produce in other markets but not in FPOs were selected for the study. Primary data were collected through personal interview method from farmers and directors of FPOs. The secondary data on agro economic features of the district were collected from Chief planning office, Krishna district. The data regarding FPOs were collected from NGO Nestham and from Research report of ICRISAT (2016). The performance of FPOs increased with the increase in the efficiency of FPO by 12 per cent. Market share which was a measure of profitability showed that the profitability of FPOs increased by 42 per cent, Equity to assets ratio (EAR) was 147 which showed that the FPOs were having strong equity base to sustain their business and improve their performance. If age of FPO was more, then the experience and external linkages would increase and this increases the performance by 15 per cent. The heterogeneity in membership increases the performance of FPO by 1.5 per cent. The factors that potentially explain the performance of FPO can be grouped into: (1) Governance and management; (2) Membership commitment; (3) External linkages; (4) Group composition and (5) Type of FPO. The various indicators are used for each of these factor groupings. In case of governance and management registry, known to the political authority and with membership registry are the variables mostly influencing the FPOs. In case of membership commitment, financial and land contribution were the factors influencing the performance. In case of external linkages, asked help was influencing the performance. In case of group composition, proportion of female in membership had influenced the performance. In type of FPOs, village level and age of FPO are variables influencing the performance. In the analysis of the impact of FPOs on farmer’s economy, the results indicate that the coefficient of inverse mills ratio insignificant showing that there was no selection bias. Group membership and market price were positive and significantly influencing factors on farmer’s economy in all the four selected FPOs. In case of Sri Vigneswara FPO the other influencing factors on the farmer’s economy were age, production and labour mandays. In case of both Chandragudem and Baji Baba FPO the factors which were influencing the farmer’s economy were production area and share of crop sold. In case of China Ogirala FPO the factors that showed impact on farmer’s economy was age other than group membership and market price. The sample FPOs faced various problems like big fluctuation in market prices, awareness among the people, competition from other markets, lack of capital to provide sufficient services, lack of backward and forward linkages, moving away from FPOs when there is loss, no storage and ware house facility, poor infrastructure facility and they prioritized competition from other markets as the major constraint with a score of 0.82 followed by big fluctuations in market prices (0.81), lack of capital to provide sufficient services (0.72), awareness among the people (0.66), moving away from FPOs when there is loss (0.47), lack of backward and forward linkages (0.38), poor infrastructure facility (0.37) and no storage and ware house facility (0.29). The various suggestions given for improving the functioning of FPOs are awareness among the people should be built up with the help of scientists, Government has to provide financial support, credit and input provision to farmers, providing storage facilities, business done on commission basis and reducing the transportation cost. They have given highest priority to Government has to provide financial support for the efficiency of FPO(0.70) followed by business done on commission basis(0.66), awareness among the people should be brought with the help of scientists(0.62), by reducing the transportation cost (0.58), improving the credit and input provision to farmers(0.50), by providing the storage facilities(0.48).en-USnullThesis