The rising health awareness among people has made the Indian organic food market placed among the fastest-growing markets globally. The global organic market is currently worth approximately ten lakh crores. While, The India organic food market stood at a value of 1238 million dollar in 2022 and is expected to grow at about 22% in the forecast period of 2022 and 2028 to reach a value of about 4082 million dollar by 2028.
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16 lakh farmers engaged in this sector
Though in a nascent stage, India currently exports organic food products worth around 7,000 crores with about 16 lakh farmers being engaged in this sector. The Ministry of Cooperation under Amit Shah, is very ambitious about the sector. The government is convinced that the farmers can directly benefit from an increasing share of the country in the world organic market. For this purpose, the National Level Multi-State Cooperative Organic Society has also been established.
A number of initiatives being taken
The Ministry of Cooperation is taking a number of other initiatives to speed up organic farming in the country, which will provide good value for the organic produce of the farmers, and will also facilitate Indian organic products in reaching the world market.
Acreage under it being raised continuously
In India, a cumulative area of 29.41 lakh ha, 38.19 lakh ha and 59.12 lakh ha have been brought under organic cultivation in the last three years (2019-20, 2020-21 and 2021-22) using organic manure and other organic inputs, which constitute 2.10%, 2.72% and 4.22% of the cultivable land of 140 million ha. Apart from this, Integrated Nutrient Management (INM) is prescribed for entire cultivable land in the country that promotes balanced use of fertilizers including chemical, organic and bio-fertilizers.
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Farmers’ receiving various supports
The government has been promoting organic farming through dedicated schemes of Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) and Mission Organic Value Chain Development in North East Region (MOVCDNER). Farmers are provided financial assistance for organic inputs such as seeds, bio fertilizers, bio-pesticides, organic manure, compost or vermi-compost, botanical extracts etc.
Farmers’ groups also receive ample support
Apart from this, support is also provided for group, Farmers Producers Organization (FPO) formation, training, certification, value addition and marketing of their organic produce. In addition, organic cultivation on either side of river Ganga and large area certification have also been introduced under PKVY to increase acreage under organic cultivation using organic manure or bio-fertilizers.
National-level cooperative society
Only recently, the Union Cabinet took a historic decision of setting up and promoting a national-level cooperative society for organic products under the Multi-State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) Act, 2002 with support from relevant ministries. All efforts are being made to leverage the strengths of cooperatives and transform them into successful and vibrant business enterprises to realize the vision of “ Sahakar-se-Samriddhi”. The cooperatives are made to think globally and act locally to leverage their comparative advantage.
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Testing & certification at an affordable cost
The cooperative society will manage various activities related to the organic sector by providing certified and authentic organic products. It will help in unlocking demand and consumption potential of organic products in domestic as well as in global markets. This society will also help cooperatives and ultimately their farmer members in getting benefits of the high price of organic products through aggregation, branding and marketing on large scale by facilitating testing and certification at affordable cost.
Institutional support for aggregation, certification, testing, procurement, storage, processing, branding, labelling, packaging, logistic facilities, marketing of organic products and arranging financial assistance for the organic farmers through members cooperatives including Primary Agricultural Credit Societies/Farmers Producer Organisations (FPOs), will also be done. The society will manage the entire supply chain of organic products produced by cooperatives and related entities through member cooperatives.
NOTE – This article was originally published in newsonair and can be viewed here
Tags: #agriculture, #farmer, #fpo, #getgreengetgrowing, #gngagritech, #greenstories, #organic, #organicfarming, #OrganicFood, #organicmarket
