Farmers Interest Group (FIG)

What is the Farmers Interest Group (FIG) scheme?

Farmers Interest Group (FIG) is a farmer-organisation scheme of the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Government of Tamil Nadu. The department lists it under Innovative Schemes within the Macro Management Mode Scheme, and its purpose is the formation of new groups of 15 farmers each for agricultural crops.

Farmers Interest Group is not an input subsidy and not a cash benefit to a household. The scheme pays for the things a farmer group needs in order to exist and function as a group, a place to keep records, technical literature to read, training for its members, and identity cards so members can be recognised when they deal with the department, input dealers and buyers.

Why the department funds groups at all. A single farmer with two acres has no bargaining power with a seed dealer, no way to hire a power tiller economically, and no practical route to a training that the department runs for 30 or 50 people at a time. Almost every other line in the Tamil Nadu agriculture budget: seed subsidy, demonstrations, Farmers Field Schools, machinery at 25 per cent subsidy, study tours; is delivered to farmers in batches, clusters or groups. FIG builds the unit those other schemes are delivered to. That is why the amounts look small: the scheme is not the benefit, it is the doorway to the benefits.

How much does a Farmers Interest Group get?

The Department of Agriculture publishes the FIG rates as follows:

A newly formed group of 15 farmers therefore draws Rs 9,400 across the three per-group heads. The Rs 20,000 per district level meeting sits at a different level, it funds the meeting at which groups across the district come together, and is not a fourth payment into each group's account.

Read the per-group figures carefully against the group size. Rs 400 per group for identity cards works out to roughly Rs 27 per member for 15 members. Rs 4,000 per group for training is about Rs 267 per member. These are working allowances for a group's own costs, in the same register as the department's other extension rates — Rs 300 per farmer for a two-day maize training, Rs 5,000 per cereals cluster training, Rs 2,000 for a study tour of 30 members.

The condition attached to all of it. The department's own wording is that all groups are entitled to avail the benefit subject to the target. Each block and district carries an annual target for how many new groups can be formed and assisted. The entitlement is real, but it is rationed by that target.

Who is eligible for a Farmers Interest Group, and who is not eligible?

A group can be formed and assisted if:

• It has 15 farmers. This is the group size the department specifies, and proposals are framed around it.
• Its members cultivate agricultural crops. FIG as described by the department is for agricultural crops; horticulture, animal husbandry and fisheries groups are organised under their own departments and schemes.
• The members' land lies in the block whose Agricultural Extension Centre the group registers with.
• It is a new group. The scheme head is the formation of new groups, so the assistance follows group formation rather than being an annual grant to groups that already exist.
• It falls within the block's target for the year.

A group or an individual cannot claim if:

• The applicant is an individual farmer. Every FIG rate is per group. A farmer applying alone is not eligible and should instead approach the Agricultural Extension Centre for the individual input subsidies; certified seed, gypsum, Rhizobium, plant protection equipment, soil health card.
• The group does not have 15 members. Groups formed at other sizes fall outside the published norm.
• The group is already formed and previously assisted. The head funds new group formation.
• The year's target is exhausted. Applications then carry over rather than being rejected on merit.
• The applicants expect a personal cash transfer. The assistance buys shared assets, training and identity cards for the group. This is the single most common misunderstanding about FIG.

How to apply for a Farmers Interest Group in Tamil Nadu

1. Assemble 15 farmers from the same village or neighbouring villages who cultivate agricultural crops and are willing to work as a group. Fifteen is the number the department's norm is built on, so form the group at that size rather than expecting the officer to adjust the figure.
2. Meet the Assistant Agricultural Officer at your village Agricultural Extension Centre. This is the entry point named by the department for FIG, and this officer holds the block's target for new groups in the current year.
3. Hold a formation meeting and pass a resolution. Record the group's decision to form, elect a president, secretary and treasurer, and prepare the list of the 15 member farmers with their land details.
4. Submit land records and identity documents. Provide chitta and adangal or patta for the members, along with Aadhaar, so the group can be registered against the block's target and identity cards can be issued.
5. Open a group bank account. The per-group assistance of Rs 5,000, Rs 4,000 and Rs 400 is released to the group, so the account must be in the group's name with the office bearers as signatories, not in an individual member's name.
6. Have the proposal moved up the line. The Agricultural Officer or Deputy Agricultural Officer at the block level and the Assistant Director of Agriculture at the block level process FIG proposals, and the Joint Director of Agriculture at the district level is the district authority.
7. Spend the assistance on what it is meant for. Rs 5,000 goes to office equipment, technical bulletins and setting up the group's library; Rs 4,000 to training and skill acquisition for members; Rs 400 to the identity cards. Keep bills, because the department accounts for the grant against these heads.
8. Send members to the district level meeting. District level meetings of Farmers Interest Groups are funded at Rs 20,000 per meeting and are where groups meet the department and each other.

What documents are required?

Who are the officers to contact?

The department publishes a specific escalation ladder for FIG, and it is worth knowing all four rungs before a proposal stalls:

• Village level: Assistant Agricultural Officer at the Agricultural Extension Centre. This is where a group starts.
• Block level: Agricultural Officer or Deputy Agricultural Officer.
• Block level: Assistant Director of Agriculture, who is also the Block Technology Team convenor.
• District level: Joint Director of Agriculture at the Collectorate.

The same four officers handle the department's other group and input schemes, so a group that has registered once is dealing with familiar people for its seed, gypsum, demonstration and training entitlements afterwards.

What else is a group eligible for once formed?

Forming a FIG is worth more than Rs 9,400 because of what the group can then reach:

• TANWABE: Tamilnadu Farm Women in Agri Business and Extension assists farm women groups at 15 farm women per group with Rs 10,000 per group to take up a new entrepreneurial activity, and supplies power tillers, cultivators, disc ploughs, sugarcane planters, power threshers and fertiliser-cum-seed drills at 25 per cent subsidy.
• Seed production. In the department's seed programme, preference is given to women groups and Farmers Interest Groups for the production of foundation seeds, a direct, published advantage of being a registered FIG.
• Training batches run at 30 or 50 farmers per batch, which a group of 15 can help fill and can lobby the block office to schedule.
• Demonstrations and Farmers Field Schools, which are laid out on clusters rather than on single holdings.

Why FIG proposals fail

• Fewer or more than 15 members, so the proposal does not fit the norm.
• The block's annual target is already met, which delays rather than defeats the proposal.
• No group bank account, so the assistance has nowhere to be released to.
• Land records missing for some members, leaving the group's cultivation of agricultural crops unestablished.
• Members expecting cash in hand. The grant buys shared equipment, bulletins, training and identity cards, and groups that form on the expectation of a cash distribution usually dissolve when that does not happen.
• No bills kept against the Rs 5,000, Rs 4,000 and Rs 400 heads, which holds up accounting and any further assistance.

Help and grievance

• Village level: Assistant Agricultural Officer, Agricultural Extension Centre.
• Block level: Agricultural Officer, Deputy Agricultural Officer and the Assistant Director of Agriculture.
• District level: Joint Director of Agriculture at the Collectorate.
• Online: the Department of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare portal at tnagrisnet.tn.gov.in, and the Uzhavan mobile app.

There is no fee to form a Farmers Interest Group or to register it with the department. No intermediary is authorised to charge farmers for group formation or for the release of the group's assistance.