Exploring the key success factors of farmer producer companies in Gujarat: A farmer's perspective

Abstract

India is an agrarian country, where eighty-five percent of farmers are small and marginal farmers (with land holding less than 2 hectares). Farmers frequently cannot extract the maximum value from their produce due to a lack of a grassroots value chain linking various inputs cohesively to a firm output. Keeping this lack of availability of a grassroots connected value chain, the concept of Farmer Producer Company was mooted as the best option for the grassroots level organization for the creation and manifestation of such a value chain. However, the concerns regarding the working and sustenance of such initiatives for creating the intended impact are still looming large. To evaluate the impacting factors for the success and failure of an FPC, a study was designed and conducted in ten randomly selected farmer-producer companies in the State Of Gujarat. Factor analysis was used to analyze the collected data and to determine the factors that are important for the cause. The result of factor analysis inferred that all 11 factors together contribute 70.65% in success of a farmer producer company. The result shows that the most important factor for the success of the Farmer Producer Company was its management perspective, which contributed the highest 12.502% to the success. The other important factors were the Management team, Group cohesiveness, Input and Output Services and Infrastructural Facility. Surprisingly, the least important factor was Training and Meeting, which contributed the lowest 3.625% in success of a Farmer Producer Company.