Measuring the Role Performance of Farmer Producer Companies: An Index Development Perspective

Abstract

Collectivizing the small and marginal farmers via Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) has been considered as a way forward to address various agricultural value chain related challenges. Since the inception, Government has taken several initiatives and issued working guidelines from time to time for maintaining fi nancial and technical viability of the FPCs. In the light of various guidelines issued by the governing bodies, the FPCs are supposed to help the farmers in various arrays of activities ranging from capacity building of benefi ciaries, advisory on various agricultural activities, market integration for both inputs and outputs, enhancing agricultural productivity by implementing modern agricultural technologies, collective post-harvest activities along with marketing of the produce etc. At this juncture the need for an instrument to measure the role-performance of FPCs was recognized. Hence, a standardized index was developed which can delineate the activities undertaken by the FPCs to help the benefi ciaries in achieving the economies of scale and self-sustaining solutions to several farming related problems. The process began with identifi cation of 101 performance indicators classifi ed under seven diff erent dimensions. The indicators were then validated by the experts. After content validation 47 indicators were fi nally selected to constitute the index. And the reliability of the index (Cronbach's Alpha value 0.963) was indicative regarding the consistency of the results.