An Empirical Study on Farmers’ Club Programme : An Innovative Initiative of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD)

For sustainable growth in agriculture, there is a need to improve productivity and reduce the costs. Farmers’ club programme initiated by National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) in 1982, is one such initiative. These clubs are grassroot level informal forums. Such clubs are organized by rural branches of banks with the support and financial assistance of NABARD for the mutual benefit of the banks concerned and rural people. The programme is aimed at transmitting the latest agriculture techniques to the farmers’ field, orienting them to establish better relationship with banks, adoption of latest post-harvest handling technology, value addition and enjoy the benefits of collective bargaining power for procuring inputs and select their produce. In view of the utility of such informal forums of Farmers’ clubs, an initiative is undertaken to study the impact of these clubs on the agriculture performance. The present study aims to analyze the working, growth and development of Farmers’ clubs in Gujarat along with empirically examining the perspective of member and non-member of Farmers’ club programme in Anand district. The study also aims to analyze the awareness and satisfaction level of the respondents towards the farmers’ club programme