The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has tied up with Rythu Nestam Farmer Producer Company to set up a massive secondary food processing facility at this village in Kuderu mandal of Anantapur district, which is all set to turn 6,000 farmers entrepreneurs within the next six months.
The ₹3 crore facility, to be ready for production within six to eight months, will commercially produce ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat snacks from Jowar (Jonnalu or Sorghum), millets, groundnuts, chickpea (senagalu), and pigeonpea (Kandulu) that have undergone primary processing. ICRISAT officers Raghunandan and Harshvardhan Mane told The Hindu that Walmart Foundation will partly fund the project as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility.
The Rythu Nestam Farmer Producer Company is a federation of farmer producer organisations from eight mandals of the district and the ICRISAT had helped some of them set up primary processing units at Dharmavaram, Atmakur, Kuderu and Rapthadu mandals. These four units set up under the ‘Accelerating value chain benefits for improved income for farmers and nutrition for customers’ programme of the ICRISAT, basically procure groundnut and all kinds of dals for processing at a dal mill.
While the groundnut processing plant can handle 750 kg/hour, each dal mill can handle 200 kg/hour. They can process pigeonpea, chickpea, green gram and blackgram that are predominantly grown in these areas as an alternative to the groundnut in the face of extreme rainfall deficit. Farmers at all these units, funded by Walmart Foundation, have been trained to procure quality raw material and dish out graded products that command a good price, with dependence on middlemen at a minimum.
Walmart Foundation vice-president Julie Gehrki, along with senior officials of the foundation — Karrie Denniston and Sherry Singh — highlighted the comprehensive approach of the project, which aims at combining value addition, market linkages and promoting local nutritious crops. District Collector S. Satyanarayana, Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre director Y. Malla Reddy, Walmart Foundation and ICRISAT officials participated in a groundbreaking ceremony on Friday.
