Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Narendra Singh Tomar inaugurated the Honey FPO Programme of National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Limited (NAFED) on 26th November 2020. The inauguration programme was hosted online and attended by the new Honey FPOs, farmers and FPOs from various parts of the country.
Inaugurating the programme, the Minister stated that “Beekeeping in India is highly predominant in the unorganized sector among the rural and tribal population. Despite having a huge potential of honey production in the country, the beekeeping industry is still underdeveloped. The adoption level of beekeeping is also quite less due to various constraints. NAFED will address these issues by acting as an intermediary and filling up the gaps between the elements of the beekeeping supply chain and also ensure price remuneration to the beekeeping farmers. Through these Honey FPOs, NAFED will also work for promotion of beekeeping as an occupation for unemployed women and tribal populations and uplift their livelihood”.
Minister Tomar also said that honey beekeeping will change the lifestyle of small and marginal farmers and help in achieving the goal of increasing farmer’s income.
Government of India is promoting the creation of FPOs in view of their significant role in fulfilling the mission of implementing agricultural reforms in the country. Promotion & Formation of FPOs is the first step for converting Krishi into Atmanirbhar Krishi. For this purpose new Central Sector Scheme for Formation & Promotion of new 10,000 FPOs was launched.
Implementing Agencies have identified block wise clusters where FPOs will be developed by specialist ‘Cluster Based Business Organizations (CBBOs)’ engaged by the Implementing Agencies. NAFED had already empanelled the CBBOs and other IAs are in the process of empanelment of CBBOs.
The Honey FPOs made by ISAP under the aegis of National Bee Board (NBB) and NAFED will help its members in not only upgrading their skills in Scientific Bee Keeping but will also help in making its members set up state of the art infrastructural facilities for processing honey and allied beekeeping products like bee’s wax, propolis, royal jelly, bee venom, etc., quality control laboratories, collection, storage, bottling and marketing centres. These FPOs will benefit by the schemes of Mini Mission – 1 and Mini Mission – 2 of National Beekeeping and Honey Mission (NBHM) of National Bee Board. The beekeepers / honey collectors of all the 5 states would be helped in branding and collective marketing of their Honey and other allied products of bee keeping through the marketing channels of NAFED. Efforts will also be made to explore the overseas market for improving the returns to the Bee Keepers and Honey collectors.
(Published from PIB)