India Farm Service Entrepreneurs

The India Farm Services Entrepreneurs Project partnered with the Growth-Oriented Micro-Enterprise Development Program (GMED) of Agricultural Development International and Volunteers in Overseas Cooperative Assistance (ACDI-VOCA). It is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (US AID). Pioneer provides seed to farmers through retail outlets, but is challenged to provide value added services for the millions of grain farmers in India.

The India Farm Services Entrepreneur Project created a model to establish small rural-based entrepreneurs to connect with farmers and the grain value-chain for supply and service delivery.

• A pilot was conducted that trained farm service entrepreneurs at the village level.
• These entrepreneurs were connected to medium-scale poultry producers, who were also involved in the project.
• The design helped to increase offerings of farm demonstrations, provided basic agronomy expertise and problem solving assistance, as well as connections to the poultry industry.
• The entrepreneurs were trained and worked to consolidate farmer produce.
• The poultry producers had a more reliable source of grain and improved grain quality resulting in better prices for grain producers.
  

This project gave Pioneer and its partners insight into the challenges of providing farm services to farmers in India.

• The farm service entrepreneurs that were trained are now firmly linked to the poultry producers.
• Pioneer will tweak the model and incorporate learnings into other projects such as the Pioneer ACCESS collaboration.
• Strong relations have been established between Pioneer and the poultry producers.