The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra on Wednesday, approved a historic decision to set up and promote a national-level multi-state seed cooperative society under the Multi State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) Act, 2002 which will act as an apex organisation for production, procurement, processing and distribution of quality seeds.

The national cooperative society will conduct strategic research & development and develop a system for preservation and promotion of indigenous natural seeds through various cooperative societies across the country with support from relevant ministries especially the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare, Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) and National Seeds Corporation (NSC) through their schemes and agencies.

The prime minister observed that all efforts should be made to leverage the strengths of cooperatives and transform them into successful and vibrant business enterprises to realise the vision of “Sahakar-se-Samriddhi’ as cooperatives hold the key to rural economic transformation in the country in agriculture and allied sectors.

Primary to national level cooperatives societies including primary societies, district, state and national level federations and multi state cooperative societies can become members.  All these cooperatives will have their elected representatives in the Board of the society as per its bye-laws.

The proposed society will help increase the seed replacement rate, varietal replacement rate, ensuring the role of farmers in quality seed cultivation and seed variety trials, production and distribution of certified seeds with a single brand name, by utilizing the network of all levels of cooperatives.

The availability of quality seeds will help in increasing agricultural productivity in strengthening food security and also increasing the income of the farmers. The members will benefit both by realization of better prices by production of quality seeds, higher production of crops by use of High Yielding Variety (HYV)seeds and also by dividend distributed out of the surplus generated by the society.

In another proposal, the Cabinet approved setting up and promoting another national level cooperative society for organic products under the Multi State Cooperative Societies (MSCS) Act, 2002.

This cooperative society will manage various activities related to the organic sector by providing certified and authentic organic products.  It will help in unlocking demand and consumption potential of organic products in domestic as well as in global markets.  This society will also help cooperatives and ultimately their farmer members in getting benefits of the high price of organic products through aggregation, branding and marketing on a large scale by facilitating testing and certification at affordable cost.

The Cabinet approved setting up and promoting a third national level multi-state cooperative export society under the same Act with support from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry through their export related policies, schemes and agencies, for undertaking exports of all goods and services produced by cooperatives and related entities.