“Odisha Integrated Irrigation Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture” is a project under Department of Water Resources, Govt. of Odisha with an objective “To intensify and diversify agriculture production, enhance climate resilience and improve water productivity in selected cascades of Odisha.” To achieve the above objective, there is a plan of promoting 500 Agri entrepreneurs and also capacitating existing FPOs to cater the needs of the farmers by setting up enterprises around Agriculture inputs like quality seedlings, seeds, fertiliser, and inputs for disease pest management, aggregating, sorting, grading & marketing and fisheries.
Agriculture Entrepreneurship Promotion Scheme (AEPS) was launched by APICOL under Agril. & FE Department with an aim to groom at least 1000 rural Agriculture Entrepreneurs (AEs) in 40 tribal dominated blocks of Odisha spread across 12 districts. The entrepreneurs identified under the scheme are expected to engage with 150 to 250 families each, collectively impacting the life and livelihoods of 2 Lakh households in coming three years by providing quality agricultural inputs and services, farm mechanisation and marketing assurances to farmers at their doorstep. Further, it’s agreed upon under AEPS-OIIPCRA to promote these entrepreneurs in convergence with Department of Agriculture and Farmer’s Empowerment leveraging the capacities of Agriculture Entrepreneurship Promotion Scheme implemented by APICOL and its partner agency.
However, it is visualised that all the AEs promoted under OIIPCRA would have a rather multi-sector local area-based approach and would set up Agri-enterprises to serve the farmers in the ayacut areas of MIPs and adjoining villages. Further, they would specialise in one or two trade areas to set up a feasible agri-business enterprise. This enterprise can be chosen in sync with the promotional activities planned by A & FE Department, FAR Department or ICAR/other technical institutes. Some of the examples of such intervention is seed multiplication activities planned by IRRI/ICARDA, Fish production activities planned by Directorate of Fisheries, Agro Service Centres planned by Directorate of Agriculture, Vegetable/Floriculture production activities planned by Directorate of Horticulture.
The candidates selected following due procedures of selection will be trained and provided with incubation support for 12 months for setting up their Agri-enterprises. They will undergo a formal selection process under the scheme. Afterwards they will be trained on their chosen trades. The areas of trainings are General Agriculture services, Agricultural input and output sales, Agro service centres, Nursery, Organic formulations and Non pesticide product shops, Cereal and Vegetable seed production, Mushroom spawn production and services, Integrated farming system, Fish fingerling production etc.
The grooming activities of these AEs would take place in an enterprise promotion ecosystem created under the guidance of APICOL along with Agriculture Entrepreneurship (AE) hub at state level and in sync with the activities of FPOs and other CBOs like Producer groups, Pani panchayats at the block level.
After successful completion of trade specific training, AEs will be provided with incubation support where they would develop functional linkages with financing institutions, market actors and Community Based Organizations (CBOs). They would also be supported to avail benefits of relevant Government schemes and avail licence and other regulatory compliances to run their business. They would get a support of Rs. 60000 during the 12 months incubation period linked with the milestones. Post completion of incubation they would independently run their enterprise to serve 150 to 250 small and marginal farmers.
