Research Studies


Evolving Institutional Mechanism for strengthening Public Private Partnership under ATMA through Agripreneurs

As of now over 32,000 agriculture professionals have been trained, under AC&ABC Scheme, of which around 12,000 have established agriventures. A mid-term evaluation by GoI and other research studies indicated that an agripreneur with 32 months of business experience covered an average of 30 villages, 19 farmers in each village, provided a variety of extension services to them resulting in enhancement of yield by 17.4%, income by 28.8% besides creating jobs for another 6 people in the same rural setup.

Extension Reforms have identified activities under Agri-Clinics and Agri-Business Centres under Cafeteria for promotion, by providing service charges for the extension activities carried out by agripreneurs. Revised guidelines of the AC&ABC scheme have incorporated several provisions for integration of extension activities of agripreneurs with those of ATMA. However, feedback from the agripreneurs has indicated that linkages between agripreneurs and ATMA are still very weak and the same has been endorsed by ATMA officials.

In view of the above, a need was felt to understand the existing linkages between ATMA and agripreneurs, identify the weak and potential areas of the linkages, evolve PPP models through wider consultation with stakeholders, document the process and develop a policy brief for up-scaling. Hence, this study for promoting PPP between ATMA and agripreneurs has been taken up.

This action research will be carried out in Varanasi District, which has 8 blocks and 69 established agriventures in different activities under agriculture and allied sectors.