Why in News?

• The Government established Small Farmers’ Agri-Business Consortium (SFAC) as a Society in January 1994 to facilitate agri-business ventures by catalysing private investment through Venture Capital Assistance (VCA) Scheme in close association with financial institutions.

Objectives:

• • To catalyse agro-industrial growth in the country based on the principles of:
    • Ecological sustainability
    • Economic efficiency
    • Social equity
  • To undertake or assist in undertaking programs for employment generation, growth and diversification of agriculture & agro-based industries to increase food production and export of agriculture products, in both primary and processed forms.
  • To identify and promote post-harvest processing/manufactures units in the public, private and cooperative sector.
  • To promote organization of marketing chain both for domestic and export marketing.
  • To influence Government policies for agriculture, thereby increasing the flow of resources and augmenting the rate of capital formation in agriculture sector.
  • To pave the way for establishment of integrated producers’ organizations with forward and backward linkages.
  • To prepare, print and publish papers, periodicals, monographs in furtherance of the objectives of the society.

Role of SFAC:

• The role of State SFACs is to aggressively promote agribusiness project development in their respective States. The main functions of SFAC are:
• Promotion of development of small agribusiness through VCA scheme;
• Helping formation and growth of Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) / Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs);
• Improving availability of working capital and development of business activities of FPOs/FPCs through Equity Grant and Credit Guarantee Fund Scheme;
• Implementation of National Agriculture Market (e-NAM) Electronic Trading platform.