Institutional support for tribal farmer interest groups in Erode district of Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Globally small and marginal tribal farmers situation is worse because of poor marketing system and lack of quality input and technical services. This worse situation can be empowered through group approach like Farmer Producer Organization (FPO), Farmers Interest Group (FIG) and Self Help Group (SHG). FIG is a self-managed, independent group of farmers with a shared goal and interest. This is usually formed by 15-20 members. It is evidenced that the profitability in farming would be possible in groups rather than practising it individually. This is particularly the case where farmers organize themselves to respond to credit and input needs, marketing concerns, etc., as there are clear economic benefits of working in groups. The present study is aimed to investigate the level of institutional support for tribal Farmer Interest Groups (FIGs) in Erode district. A cent per cent of the respondents (100.00%) admitted that they received support for getting information regarding input availability, subsidiary activities, various schemes of the state department of agriculture. The vast majority of the respondents received information on technical support on production aspects of crop production (98.00%) and received credit support whenever needed (98.00%). Institutions like NGOs, State Department of Agriculture played a major role in improving the standard of living of these tribal people. They received support from the institution from production to marketing and value addition. However,  they did not get proper guidance for soil testing and quality testing of inputs. Because of remoteness, they received a medium level of institutional support.