Lawrencedale Agro Processing India Pvt. Ltd. (LEAF), an integrated agriculture service provider, is organising financial support for marginalised farmers by tying up with non-banking financial companies (NBFCs).
Palat Vijayaraghavan, founder and CEO of LEAF, told The Hindu that it has tied up with four new- age NBFCs for this service and supported 800 farmers in the Nilgiris in the last two months. The credit extended to the farmers will be between ₹20,000 to ₹2 lakh and the repayment will be in six months.
The farmers will get inputs for 85 % of the credit amount and the remaining 15% will be disbursed as cash. They will have to sell the produce to LEAF and the price will be decided on the date of harvest. “The farmers can either pay back the loan to LEAF through cash or they can give us the harvest equal to the value of the loan they had taken,” he said.
The company plans to support three million marginalised farmers during the next 24 months by organising loans to the tune of ₹500 crore in total through this project.
The aim of the service is to help the farmers continue the cropping cycle despite the challenges they face because of the pandemic, he said.
LEAF, which has an annual turnover of ₹36 crore, currently works with two lakh farmers across the southern States. It plans to reach ₹200 crore turnover in two years.
