In Tamil Nadu, Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) have emerged as one of the most effective way of building cooperation among farmers by forming groups to collectively carry out agriculture related activities from production at farm level to marketing and gain market intelligence, thereby strengthening the farmers for negotiation vis-a-vis with other stakeholders.

1. Mobilising farmers into groups at village level and building up their associations to Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs).
2. Federating the Farmer Producer Groups already formed by Agriculture/Horticulture Department into FPOs and empowering the groups.
3. Strengthening of farmers’ capacity by sensitizing best agricultural practices for enhanced productivity.
4. Facilitating access to fair and remunerative markets including linking of producer groups for marketing opportunities through market aggregators.
5. Ensuring access to usage of quality inputs and services for market driven production and enhancing cluster competitiveness.
6. Ensuring value addition of agricultural produce and motivating FPOs into Agri Business Enterprising entity.

The Tamil Nadu Government has been supporting FPCs since 2014-15. So far, 165 FPOs have been promoted through TNSFAC under various schemes like National Agricultural Development Programme(NADP), National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA), based on the process guidelines of Small Farmers Agri Business Consortium(SFAC), GOI. Besides, Self-promoted FPCs and Farmers Producer Companies promoted by other agencies are also functioning. Currently, there are around 500 FPCs registered from the State of Tamil Nadu. Government of Tamil Nadu will continue to support and promote FPCs through various schemes.

There are 500 FPCs in the State. As most of the FPCs in the state are at start-up stage of not more than five years, they face various challenges. The biggest challenge faced by the FPCs is the lack of access to institutional credit as they embark to take up or scale up their business activities. To address this issue, the Government formulated the following three schemes to assist the FPCs viz., 1.Mezzanine Capital Assistance (MCA) to enhance the quantum of credit, 2.Credit Guarantee Scheme (CGS) to access credit 3.Revolving Fund Support (RFS) to avail concessional credit. This Scheme will be jointly implemented by the Department of Agricultural Marketing and Agri Business, Government of Tamil Nadu and NABKISAN (Subsidiary of NABARD). The Scheme envisages to benefit more than 10 lakh farmers by covering more than 1000 FPCs in the next four years.Additionally, Provision of 20 SPUs to 20 FPCs is under process. Taking into consideration, the growing number of FPOs Government of Tamil Nadu formulated “Farmer Producer Organisation Policy” exclusively for the FPOs. This FPO policy was unveiled by Hon’ble Chief Minister on 09.02.2020.