Organic farmers in Warangal to sell their produce online soon

Rythu Vikasa to make available organic farm produce

Warangal: With the formation of a farmer producer organisation (FPO) named ‘Rythu Vikasa FPO’ as per the Cooperative Act, several organic farmers of the erstwhile Warangal district are now planning to sell their produce online and door to door.

The demand for organic farm produce is going up day by day with health consciousness among the people increasing. The FPO is also planning to open outlets under the name ‘Rythu Vikasa Organic Mart’ in the city. It set up and inaugurated one such mart at Bala Samudram in Hanamkonda on Tuesday.

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A leading NGO in South India, Bala Vikasa, has been encouraging the farmers to take up organic farming in erstwhile Warangal and neighboring Siddipet district for several years now by providing logistical and administrative support to them.

Speaking to Telangana Today, Program Officer of Food Security, P Thirupathi said there were 1700 organic farmers working in coordination with them.

“While 1100 are from erstwhile Warangal district, 600 are from Siddipet district. The majority of them are certified organic farm producers,” he said.

“The Organic Farmer’s Society (FPO) has 50 members. They are planning to open more outlets. It will also be helpful to the consumers as they can buy genuine organic farm products at these stalls at lower rates compared to the products in other shops,” he said.

The organic farmers are growing crops including three types of paddy, pulses, millets, groundnut, chilli, and horticulture crops in the erstwhile Warangal district and Siddipet district. The farmers need to do organic farming for a minimum period of three years to get the certification. The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) gives certification through third-party agencies to organic farmers.

The State government had floated the concept of farmer-producer organisations (FPO) to aggregate the collection of products and create market links for better prices under the Companies Act of 2013. As establishing an FPO also helps gain financial support from the government, organic farmers’ groups under the cooperative society registered themselves as organic FPO in 2014.

The Telangana Organic Certification Authority (TOCA) in the State gives organic certification to farmers and trade bodies. TSSOCA does the inspection and certification agricultural products and food processing by assessing the conformity of products with NPOP standards and other international standards.

The union Agriculture Ministry’s Participatory Guarantee Scheme (PGS) is also giving certificates to organic farmers and incentivizing more farmers to grow organic food.