World’s Largest Decentralized Grain Storage Plan in the Cooperative Sector: progress on godowns, hiring assurance and SOP
Cooperative grain storage at Primary Agricultural Credit Society level moves from pilot to scaled implementation through scheme convergence and hiring assurances
- The Ministry of Cooperation is coordinating a PACS-level grain storage plan that combines storage, processing and hiring infrastructure.
- The Food Corporation of India, NAFED and NCCF are among the agencies providing hiring assurance for cooperative godowns.
What happened
The Ministry of Cooperation has reported progress on a cooperative-sector grain storage plan that seeks to build warehouses, custom hiring centres, primary processing units and other agri-infrastructure at Primary Agricultural Credit Society (PACS) level. The plan uses convergence of multiple Government of India schemes, including Agriculture Infrastructure Fund, Agricultural Marketing Infrastructure Scheme, Sub-Mission on Agricultural Mechanization (SMAM) and Pradhan Mantri Formalisation of Micro Food Processing Enterprises (PMFME).
The stated policy intent is to reduce wastage and transportation costs, improve farmer prices, and meet local agricultural storage and processing needs at PACS level.
UPSC may ask how cooperative grain storage at Primary Agricultural Credit Society level can reduce post-harvest losses, improve farmer realisation, and strengthen rural credit-and-services institutions, while also examining implementation bottlenecks in scheme convergence, storage certification, and inter-agency coordination.
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