Financial Resilience Strategies of Farmer Producer Organizations in Rural India

The chapter explores the financial resilience of farmer producer organizations (FPOs) in the South Indian agribusiness context and closes a critical knowledge gap regarding the community-driven financial resilience strategies adopted by farmers’ collectives to ensure sustainable agriculture production. While the majority of academic literature discusses the success stories of farmers’ collectives, the study this chapter is based on is unique in highlighting the community-driven strategies adopted by moderately functioning farmers’ groups to become financially resilient. The study employed qualitative analysis to uncover creative financial strategies used by FPOs to overcome financial sustainability obstacles like restricted credit availability, an inadequate membership base of farmers, and poor organizational governance issues. The results highlight the diversification of income sources and institutional bricolage as community-driven strategies for strengthening the financial resilience of FPOs. Finally, this chapter offers insightful recommendations to FPO leaders, practitioners, and policy makers in the agriculture sector to build resilient agribusiness organizations and thereby achieve the sustainable development goals SDG1 (no poverty) and SDG2 (zero hunger).