A Producer Enterprise (PE) is a legal entity formed by primary producers, viz. farmers, milk producers, fishermen, weavers, rural artisans, and craftsmen. A PE can be a producer company, a cooperative society, or any other legal form that provides for sharing profits/benefits among the members. In some forms, like producer companies, institutions of primary producers can also become members of PO.

Yes. The PE is an organization of the primary producers. If the produce in question is an artisan item (for example, weavers or embroiderers, spinners), then the PE will be that of artisans. The objective of the PO is to ensure better income realization to its members (who are producers) through aggregation and, if feasible, value addition.

Producer Organisation can be registered under any of the following legal provisions:

A. Cooperative Societies Act/ Autonomous or Mutually Aided Cooperative Societies Act of the respective State b. Multi-State Cooperative Society Act, 2002 c. Producer Company under Section 581(C) of the Indian Companies Act, 1956, as amended in 2013 d. Section 25 Company of Indian Companies Act, 1956, as amended as Section 8 in 2013 e. Societies registered under the Society Registration Act, 1860 f. Public Trusts registered under Indian Trusts Act, 1882

National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) – Aajeevika was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Government of India in June 2011 as a restructured version of Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY). NRLM has the mandate of reaching out to 100 million rural poor in 6 lakh villages across the country.

NRLM rests on three major pillars – universal social mobilization, financial inclusion and livelihood enhancement. It works towards bringing at least one member (preferably a woman) from all poor families into the SHG network. The SHGs and their federations offer their members services such as savings, credit and livelihood support. As the Institutions of the Poor (IoP) mature, they are facilitated to take up livelihoods/income-generating activities.

A value chain is a set of linked activities that work to add value to a product; it consists of actors and actions that improve a product while linking commodity producers to processors and markets. This value-added can be in terms of time value, form value or place value.

The players in the value chain are all the actors who are present in the whole process of linking the producer’s produce with the customer in the form in which the customer consumes. Each player adds a value to the chain and gains benefit from it. For eg. Farmers, Artisans, Aggregators, Traders, Commission Agents, Wholesalers. Retailers, Brokers etc.

The gap in the value chain is the part where an actor or activity is either absent or has not been utilized to its full potential. Generally in a value chain gap the upstream players like Producers suffer as they have information asymmetry, weak price discovery mechanism, investment constraints and limited bargaining power/stockkeeping ability.

The Foundation for Development of Rural Value Chains (FDRVC) is a Technical Support Agency that has undertaken the project of promotion of Sahajsut MBKPCL by providing professional management support for market linkages and operations management.

At present FDRVC is focused on its mandate, exploring opportunities and setting up new FPOs, but in subsequent years it can act as a support organization for other independent projects and existing producer organizations.