About AE Model
Agri Entrepreneur is a local village youth which acts as a ‘Service Providers’ to the farmers
and aid in agricultural development in remote areas. Each Agri-entrepreneur works with 200-
300 farmers in a cluster of 4-5 villages and acts as a one-stop resource provider for the
agricultural needs of small and marginal farmers. AE has to be mandatorily from one of those
4-5 villages in the cluster and should have minimum educational qualification of 10th
standard.
Agri-Entrepreneur has six critical functions such as:
- 1. Agro advisory to 150-200 farmers in his panchayat
- 2. Opening of Input service centre in his home to provide quality inputs to the farmers
- 3. Backward and forward market linkages with FPCs promoted by Jeevika
- 4. Digital banking service
- 5. Establishment of Nursery and Poly houses
- 6. Any other activities such as: Mushroom, Vermi compost, apiculture, soil testing etc.
Impact of AE model in Bihar
SFI in coordination with Jeevika has trained and incubated more than a thousand AEs. This has been accomplished with the constant support of
BRLPS- JEEViKA. The AEs act as a one-stop solution for lakhs of small and marginal
farmers, increasing their incomes through alternative methods
and fostering local agricultural development. These AEs are providing technical know-how,
quality inputs, credit facilitation, digital banking services, farm mechanization services,
market linkages to the farmers. They are also introducing new technologies to farmers and
take them for the exposure visits. AEs are being trained on preparing nursery beds and raising
seedlings, low-cost polyhouse/nethouse structures too, where they prepare
disease-free healthy seedlings and sell them to farmers. Our AEs are also sensitized about
depleting soil health, nearly fifty of our AEs are involved in soil testing and preparing
vermicompost and selling it to farmers. To ensure regular income of farmers round the year,
some AEs are also training farmers on allied activities like mushroom cultivation, dairy, poultry, goatery and, also providing inputs to start these businesses.