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Institute of Agribusiness Management, S.V. Agricultural College, ANGRAU, Tirupati-517502.
The paper entitled “Understanding and assessing the current business operations performed by identified FPOs in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh” was undertaken to investigate the current business operations performed by FPOs, the operations offered by FPOs have been categorized into pre harvest (production centric services), post-harvest, marketing operations. Perception of Board of Directors and satisfaction levels of member farmers were analysed to assess current business operations. Andhra Pradesh state of Southern India was purposively selected for the study as the researcher hails from the same state. Guntur, being agriculturally vibrant was an important district of Andhra Pradesh, due to diversified farming well established FPOs were operating in this area. Five FPOs were identified randomly from 5 mandals of Guntur district. According to the analysed data, the FPOs were extending their operations in production, post-harvest, marketing, forward linkage facilitation, backward linkage facilitation, capacity building and training to member farmers. It was found that the major production centric service offered by selected FPOs was crop advisory services, and post-harvest service offered by selected three FPOs was grading and sorting. While major marketing service offered by all the five selected FPOs were aggregation of produce and access to new markets. The major forward linkage facilitated was for access to market information and backward linkage facilitated was for input supplies. While major trainings on crop management techniques offered were soil health and crop management.
KEYWORDS: FPOs, Current business operations, Forward linkage facilitation, Backward linkage facilitation, Capacity building.