The document outlines a business plan for the Achanayakampatti Producer Company Limited, an organization formed to help small and marginal farmers in Achanayakampatti, Tamil Nadu. The company aims to pool farmers' lands and have them professionally farmed to improve yields and incomes. This will provide stable employment for farmers and utilize modern techniques. The plan also details how additional activities like beekeeping, herbal plants and eco-tourism can further boost revenues for farmers and the local community. Currently, most small farmers in India struggle due to small land holdings, debts, lack of infrastructure and support. The producer company model aims to address these challenges by taking a cooperative approach to farming.

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Achanayakampatti Producer Company Limited (in formation)
Tiruchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu INDIA
BUSINESS PLAN
Achanayakampatti Producer Company (NPC) situated in village, Achanayakampatti in
Tiruchirapalli District, was registered on … by the Registrar of Companies, Tiruchirapalli
and accorded Registration number………..
MISSION
The main mission of Achanayakampatti Producer Company Limited is to resurrect small
and marginal farmers from penury at Achanayakampatti, to begin with.
VISSION
This concept should spread all over the country with one successful example.
METHODOLOGY:
The farmers in Achanayakampatti are convinced that pooling and conducting agriculture
on their lands by professionals is the way ahead to end their misery and destitution.
This is because they realise that, individually they are unable to manage challenges
they face in earning a sustainable living from their lands. They have, after detailed
deliberations, agreed to form an enterprise along with a Team of individuals with a
non-exploitative mind-set, to form into a corporate structure, most suited to function as
a legal entity and arrange for either Grant Fund or loan fund from institutions. It could
be a Farmer Producer Company or any other form that we are examining on how we
secure funding for this initiative. For a presentation’s sake we have named it as
Achanayakampatti Producer Company Limited.

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The agricultural professionals in our team have drawn up a plan considering soil, water
and other available resources. The finance member in the team has drawn up a viable
financial plan considering the agricultural plan and with the interface with marketing
professionals. The farming will be in the form of an ‘Integrated Eco-development Farm’,
to enhance income; produce quality food and livelihoods through conservation of biotic
and abiotic resources, as its focus. The cornerstone of this methodology is:
Advantages of Land Pooling Concept:
1. The professionals engaged with the enterprise will plan the most appropriate
crops to reap the optimal revenue, based on markets, opportunity for value
addition, export potential, direct marketing and branding to actual consumers; In
other words embrace the techniques of a professional enterprise to conduct
business in an ethical manner, just like any other well-managed enterprise
would.
2. Farmers will be employed in the pooled lands for a remuneration, instead of
travelling long distances to work for others or MNREGA. Full time and all year
round employment will sustain their living and thus resurrect them from penury
and other concomitant pitfalls like suicides. This is indeed a major breakthrough
for the farmers in this approach.
3. Besides just cultivation, the professionals will also scan the environment, to
harness water resources, create known methods of water harvesting techniques
and usher all technologies available today for the agricultural development. This
will be a real developmental work that individual farmers have not been able to
so far.
4. Creation of botanical environment conducive to honeybee cultivation, herbal
plantations and such like ecological resource building, small value addition from
existing resources will augment revenue and in foreseeable future usher in agri-
tourism or eco-tourism that will balloon their income.
5. The farmer’s cattle will be taken care to ensure its health and harness its utility
to the building organic cultivation. Animal husbandry, small cottage industry to
generate wholesome employment to all those unemployed will add value to our

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activities. Soap making, palm sugar, edible oils from coconut and sesame seeds
are a few.
6. Yoga and physical education for the youths and farmer’s children will form a
part of the activities as well go along after fulfilling the prime objectives.
7. Farmers need not sell their lands or lease them to the enterprise. They will
continue to enjoy the ownership of their lands as before. Farmers who do not
wish to work for the company may remain as they will not be coerced to work.
8. The core Team while will consist of professionals in management and
agriculture. They will also include farmers who have intuitive knowledge /
application in agriculture as a part of this Team.
9. All farmers whether landowners or workers from outside without land owned by
them, will receive a respectful and dignified treatment by the functionaries of the
enterprise.
10. Farmer’s tradition food grains will be cultivated on the land to enable them to
avail for their consumption and not go elsewhere to buy.
11. The farmer who wishes to sell his land will be asked to offer to existing
members, failing which he can sell to an outsider, provided no access will be
granted across the lands of others. He can become a member as he cannot
cultivate independently without access.
12. An independent and respectable person of the society shall arbitrate any dispute
and seek to resolve or follow any legal provisions that exist.
BACKGROUND DATA
Overview of Agriculture in India:
Our country’s economy is predominantly agriculture- based, since independence and
transcended into an Industrial Economy to build faster growth and employment.
Somehow, planners did not lay adequate importance on agriculture, leaving many small
farmers to fend for themselves Overtime, these classes of farmers found it extremely
difficult to carry on. Failed in their endeavour, destitution overtook and landed them in
penury.

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On the other side, the country’s overall global picture reads well; India rated 2nd
in
global fruit and vegetable production, second highest producer of wheat and rice and
so on. Be it as it may, the ground realities are that about 55% of the total employed
people in India are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood even as of now! The
holdings of more than 75% of farmers have marginalised or small. Less than 50% of
the sown area is under irrigation, making it a rain-fed form of economy. The vagaries
of weather cripple them further, as no scientific means of water conservation is
practised. Water storing facilities are not available. Methods to control floods that
ravage agriculture are still primitive in the country. It is thus evident from some
published data that the lives of small and marginal farmers are in destitution and the
consequential suicides that cause anguish and pain to every Indian. The data published
by the National Crime Records Bureau has registered a rise of 42%, in 2015 over
2014. Maharashtra recorded the highest suicides. Times of India of 6th
January 2017. Tamil Nadu
in the current year has just declared its State as drought affected and has announced
assistance.
On the flip side, we find large farmers conducting agriculture profitably with large land
holdings. They are often politically powerful and financially strong. Such contrast gives
rise to unrest, violence and agitation. No sustainable solution has emerged to bridge
this gap. The disputes in water sharing by neighbouring states compounds the misery
and farmers’ protests and unrest are common in news coverage. The protests in
Government fixing MSP for crops erupts discontentment.
The Predicament of small and marginal farmers in India
However the life of small and marginal farmer in India are very different than other
farmers who are able to conduct their work on a low key. They main reason that
impact them are as under and there is no solution that has yet emerged for their
destitution, though many in the environment exist to find a solution that eludes. The
issues are:
1. Fragmented lands of farmers cannot absorb technology or mechanisation.

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2. They suffer from perpetual indebtedness hence are unable to provide even basic
inputs.
3. It is very difficult to source farm-labor and if sourced, it is tough to get productivity.
4. Poor storage methods inhibit safekeeping from parasites and price protection.
5. The strings of intermediaries deny the profits of farmer’s meagre produce.
6. There is no mechanism to protect against price variation.
Central and State Governments provide help and assistance to these farmers through
consistent budgetary allocations every year, besides providing ad-hoc reliefs when either
floods or droughts strike. However, the relief is slothful and corrupt. This is one big
reason for the abysmal state of these classes of farmers.
Way ahead to a sustainable agriculture, as proposed by the Government:
The Government took a progressive step in 2002 to incorporate (part IXA in the Indian
Companies Act.1956) a legal provision, to form a Producer Company concept, based
on the recommendations of the Y.K. Alagh Committee set up for this purpose. The
Registrar of Company (RoC) is empowered to incorporate the Producer Company (PC).
Essentially this was to overcome the convoluted by-laws relating to the functioning of
the cooperative society system that has become redundant in the agriculture industry.
As a relief, Producer Company was to provide for a structural form to professionalise
this vocation and to enable farmers to create a corporate form of an enterprise. They
were supposed to run like a real-time professional corporate company. They were to
help farmers plan their production and so on. However in reality, the operations have
evolved to be a mere facilitator for farmers. For instance, these companies should
have engaged a full-time agriculture expert and provided on the ground help to each
farmer from planning to execution. Thereafter the company should have found markets
to realise the full value of the produce of farmers. The company should raise capital
to take care of the needs of the farmer members. Far from these activities, a mere

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facilitator’s role has not added any value to the initial idea with which these companies
were initiated. Each farmer produces what he thinks is best for him. There is no
guidance provided by the PC to any farmer. The farmers make requests for marketing
their produce. The PC’s staff finds an intermediary in the market and sells the produce
of the farmer. Farmer’s meetings are generally a pandemonium, when I attended one
in Chennai! Moreover, the small and marginal farmers are not in this league and thus
are outside left without any form of hand-holding. Our mission, therefore is to find a
solution to the small and marginal farmers.
Our Plans to formulate a Solution for Achanayakampatti:
We plan an integrated Eco-development Farm that would enhance income; increase
produces the quality of food and livelihoods through conservation of biotic and abiotic
resources. In short, the procedure followed will conserve, regenerate, enhance the
environment, creature, cattle, and livestock for sustainable income and quality food and
this Eco-development farm is a model farming system for mitigation and coping
mechanism of climate change.
In the creation of this enterprise, we have focused into the following areas to ensure:
a. A fully qualified and hands-on person in Dr. Nageswaran is available on a full-
time engagement for this project for production and harvesting crops. He will
also be supported by some enlightened farmers and personnel qualified and
experienced on regular engagement basis, in due course as planned by Dr.
Nageswaran.
b. Marketing is proposed to be undertaken directly to consumers in the form of an
outlet that we propose to create both at Vaiyampatti, on the main NH 45,
Tiruchirapalli and Dindugal. We plan a shop-on-wheels concept that would go
around residential areas of city roads. We are also exploring possibilities to the
export of pulses and millet and in due course, some fruits to markets like
Singapore or the Middle East. We shall soon obtain APEDA certification and
necessary export license required for these endeavours. Experts in the Team are
available to take charge of this portfolio.

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c. Close coordination of activities that create value by an expert in Finance who is
available in the Team and who will work as an important custodian to ensure
to pay off the bank loan, if secured or full fill any conditions of grant or a
CSR Fund obligations, if any.
It has always been a challenge for diverse stakeholders working together – especially
when the mandates are inherently different. Self-imposed boundaries and hierarchies
stifle collective action. However, all these challenges dissolve when the purpose
becomes bigger than the position.
People behind this venture:
1. S. Raghavan, former Director Indian Oil Corporation (IBP Unit) built the core
idea, is sphere heading this Project. His passion for farmer emancipation has
driven him to research and provide for such initiative and persons mentioned
below have all joined him to help him and stay committed to this project.
2. Thangapandian is an engineer and a farmer, of Vaiyampatti, who introduced the
farming community in Nattampudur, to Raghavan. He is also a social worker in
many nearby villages engaged in moral education and is a powerful motivational
speaker for children in Government Schools in the area. He is an all-rounder
and ability to manage rural affairs will be very useful.
3. Manicavachagam, is a farmer and a person who fostered a similar idea and
responsible for building the trust in the minds of farmers in Nattampudur. He
bought lands in the village to infuse confidence in the minds of farmers who
lost their will in farming due to destitution. His brother is the CEO of Narayanur
Producer Company in Narayanur, in Karur District.
4. Ravishankar, CEO in an HR company in Chennai joined Raghavan, after seeing
his comments in the media answering some question on agriculture issues. He
will look after areas of Human Resource Development of the company and
assume an important synthesis / integration of farmers and outsiders to build a
harmonious and lasting relationship. He will also train for improving skills.

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5. Ramesh, who worked with Raghavan in the petroleum industry and has long
experience in Marketing. He will look at export marketing as also setting up
marketing network for the company on an enduring basis.
6. Raja Vel a Chartered Accountant working with Ravishankar who also evinced
interest in the core idea of the project. He will lay the systems, audit and all
relevant checks and balances on finance and systems. He will also help in
raising finance from institutions and venture capitalist and look at legal and other
important areas of compliance issues from Company Act stand point of view.
7. Venkatramani is a Technical expert and has worked for over 25 years with M
S Swaminathan foundation and The Hindu as Agricultural Correspondent. He ably
assisted by Dr. Nageshwaran has spearheaded the project’s production efficacy.
He has won several National Awards like Chaudhary Charan Singh Award for
Excellence. He was a recipient of ICRISAT Science Award 2002 as Outstanding
Journalist and many such awards and recognition. He has worked in Japan and
Syria. He is currently the Secretary of the Center for Research on Sustainable
Agriculture and Rural Development (CRSARD), at M.S. Swaminathan Research
Foundation, Chennai.
8. Dr. Nageshwaran, who worked for long years with Venkatramani in M S
Swaminathan foundation and is committed to working full time in the project
leading the agricultural operations for the company, has a Doctorate in Economic
Studies
These dedicated men mentioned above will stand behind this venture, closely
monitoring its course and lend their full support. Some of this personnel will also
assume some role to give adequate and full-time support. These men are fully
committed to the progress of this venture.
Once the operations are successful, the company will further engage itself into
community development, such as providing schools, or education, health, sports and
other social uplifts.

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Raghavan
A3, Apollo Plaisir Apartment
20, Venkatratnam Nagar,
Adyar, Chennai 600020
farmeremancipation@gmail.com
Chennai: January 20, 2017