Bihar State Vegetable Processing and Marketing Scheme

Bihar State Vegetable Processing and Marketing Scheme aims at creating a virtuous cycle for vegetable producers and consumers through three tier cooperative structure i.e. primary vegetable cooperative societies (PVCS) at grassroots/farmer/block level, Unions at cluster (a group of districts) level and an apex federation at state level.

This scheme aims at organizing Bihar state vegetable producer into three tier cooperative structures for ensuring remunerative prices to farmers and standard quality vegetable at reasonable price to consumers and to eliminate middle men. A federation has been established under which there are two unions operating presently, namely Tirhut Union for East Champaran, West Champaran, Sheohar, Sitamarhi and Muzaffarpur districts and Harit Union for Patna, Nalanda, Vaishali, Samastipur and Begusarai districts.

Vegetable farmers have been mobilized and federated into PVCS in most of the blocks. Since the main function of PVCS is collection and aggregation of vegetables from farmer members and supplying them to their respective unions after primary processing. We have created 168 PVCS as of now for the supplying of vegetables on day to day business transaction.

Mission

Organizing Bihar's vegetable producer into cooperative structure for ensuring remunerative prices to vegetable growers and standard quality vegetables at reasonable price to consumers.

Working Mechanism

The scheme is working actively on organizing vegetable farmers. It seeks to envisage membership strength of 1,000 farmers at each PVCS and covers more than two lakh farmers. Supply chain management maintains the balance between the demand and supply and involves activities right from procurement of materials and converting them into finished goods for ensuring delivery at the right time to reach the end consumer. Hence supply chain management is the life of an organization. The farmers directly sell the produced vegetable to PVCS at higher prices compared to open market. The primary motive of the unions is to maximize the income of farmers. The unions directly procure from farmers through PVCS and payment is made through the bank on the same day. This mechanism entails to connect the farmer directly to the consumer for ensuring remunerative prices to farmers, and quality vegetables at reasonable prices to customers. This will further helps and boost farmers’ income by reducing the wastages. Thus it will also promote the best practices of farming, maintain marketing information system, diversifying and raising levels of knowledge and skills in agricultural production and post harvest processing that will add value to products.