Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF)
The Context
The Agriculture Infrastructure Fund (AIF) scheme, launched by the Government of India, aims to accelerate the development of post-harvest management infrastructure and community farming assets, such as cold storage facilities, collection centres, and processing units. By enhancing the agricultural supply chain, the scheme seeks to reduce post-harvest losses and improve market access, ultimately increasing farmers' incomes. The scheme targets a wide range of beneficiaries, including farmers, farmer producer organizations (FPOs), agri-entrepreneurs, start-ups, and agricultural marketing cooperatives. By focusing on various aspects of post-harvest management infrastructure, such as cold storage, warehousing, grading and sorting facilities, packaging units, processing units, and marketing infrastructure, the AIF scheme aims to build a robust agricultural ecosystem.
Objectives
- To promote investments in logistics infrastructure, enabling farmers to sell in the market with reduced post-harvest losses with a smaller number of intermediaries.
- To promote modern packaging and cold storage system access, enabling farmers to be able to further decide when to sell in the market and improve realization.
Activities
- Improvement of marketing infrastructure, allowing farmers to sell directly to a larger base of consumers and hence, increase value realization for the farmers.
- Leveraging new age technologies including IoT, AI. with a dedicated source of funding, to push for innovation in agriculture sector among entrepreneurs.
Key Pre-requisites
- Availability of subsidies and interest subvention
- Engagement of financing institutions (Banks, NBFCs, etc.)
- Identification and registration of eligible beneficiaries (Farmers, FPOs, agri-entrepreneurs, start-ups, cooperatives)
- Comprehensive plans for post-harvest management infrastructure (cold storage, warehousing, etc.)
- Promotion of public-private partnerships
