The paper, titled “Best Practices in Agricultural Cooperatives in the Global Arena”, notes that the agricultural cooperatives offer one of the most effective solutions to these challenges. Their role is particularly important in India, where smallholders constitute nearly 90 percent of farm households and often struggle to participate effectively in modern agricultural markets, it adds.
Notably, India possesses one of the largest cooperative ecosystems in the world, with over 800,000 cooperatives serving more than 300 million members across sectors such as agriculture, dairy, fertilisers, finance, storage, marketing, and processing.
“Agricultural cooperatives have been powerful instruments for strengthening farmers’ livelihoods, improving market access, and promoting rural development. India has a rich history of cooperatives. The first credit cooperative was founded in 1904. Today, India boasts one of the largest cooperative networks globally, with over 800,000 cooperatives serving more than 300 million members. These cooperatives operate in various sectors, including input supply, production, marketing, procurement, processing, storage, credit, and finance,” says M.L. Jat, Director General, ICAR and Secretary, DARE.
Cooperatives in dairy, sugar, fertilisers and farm credit have delivered notable successes, and their role is becoming even more critical as agriculture faces technological disruption, climate challenges and deeper market integration, notes Jat who is also President, NAAS.
“Cooperatives offer an opportunity to farmers, especially small and marginal, to strengthen their position through collective action, thus paving the way for the development of the agricultural sector in the country towards Viksit and Atmanirbhar Bharat,” adds Jat.
The paper cites Amul and IFFCO as two of India’s most successful cooperative models. Founded in 1946, Amul has transformed the dairy sector by linking about 3.6 million milk producers through nearly 18,000 village cooperatives, with its success driven by transparent pricing, timely payments, professional management and strong branding. IFFCO, meanwhile, has grown into one of the world’s largest farmer-owned fertilizer cooperatives, serving over 50 million farmers. The paper highlights its scale, technological innovation and pioneering work in nano-fertilisers as evidence that cooperatives can drive agricultural modernisation while remaining farmer-centric. The paper highlights the government’s push to strengthen cooperatives through the Ministry of Cooperation and the National Cooperative Policy 2025. Key priorities include transforming PACS into multi-service institutions, improving governance through digitisation and professional management, and boosting participation of women and youth. Drawing on global examples, it argues that well-governed, member-driven cooperatives can remain commercially competitive while advancing inclusive rural development.
The paper advocates that technologies such as AI, blockchain, IoT and digital finance can make cooperatives more efficient, transparent and market-oriented. It argues that strong cooperatives are critical for enabling small farmers to compete in modern markets, while recommending greater focus on value addition, branding, direct market access, carbon-credit initiatives and inter-cooperative collaboration to boost farmer returns.