Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) is a non-government, non-profit organisation incorporated in 2001, under Section 25 of the Indian Companies Act. It is a network of agriculture and allied sector professionals in India and developing countries. It is a growing network encompassing over 15,000 registered associate members, comprising 1500 Agri-Experts, 525 Partner NGOs, over 824 Individual users and more than 1050 researchers.

Objectives

• - To coordinate, promote, develop and educate about technical services to all communities, organizations and individuals engaged in agriculture and rural development.
• - To provide query redress services for queries received from communities, organizations, farmers and individuals dealing in agribusiness and other related technical activities.
• - To provide market linkage activities to growers and producers and help create institutions which would strengthen marketing and value addition to primary produce.
• - To provide training, course content, know-how and managerial inputs for set -ting up and management of agribusiness clinics, rural service centres, providing content aggregation and dissemination services.
• - To provide all kind of recruitment services, training services, capacity building services, consultancy services and advisory services to all communities, organizations and individuals with regard to agribusiness, rural development and other related technical sectors.
• - To undertake advocacy campaigns and projects to promote financial inclusion amongst low income households especially in rural India.

Services

1. Agri-Extension Services

ISAP agri-extension services involve bridging the knowledge gap through farmer awareness campaigns, resolving farmer queries through ‘Query Redress Service’, bridging the digital divide by expanding the ICT outreach, developing network among stakeholder and establishing knowledge delivery mechanism through promotion of community radio.

With support of the partners, ISAP conducts Farmers’ Awareness Campaigns and Farmers Training to generate awareness among the rural farmers with the objective of expanding the outreach and revamp the extension services. ISAP has already trained 78,380 farmers at 2,064 locations in all the 48 districts of Madhya Pradesh.

i) ICT Services in Agriculture

ISAP with support of Microsoft - Unlimited Potential Programme has established ‘Community Technology Learning Centres (CTLCs)’ in remote villages of Maharashtra to provide IT training to 45,000 farmers and unemployed youth. 

ii) Community Radio Stations (CRS)

ISAP has been identified as one of seven organizations in the country to establish community radio station. It will set up the first radio station at Shironj block of Vidhisa district in Madhya Pradesh.

iii) Query Redress Services (QRS)

QRS enables ISAP to provide solutions to farmer’s queries pertaining to agricultural practices, problems, productivity improvement, scientific farming and improved technology for production to farming community. Currently ISAP receives more than 300 queries per day from farmers of Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh farmers, where it runs this service. Upto 14th Feb. 2008, ISAP has responded to 78,505 online queries besides many more through the offline medium.

iv) NGO Networking

ISAP provides agri-extension services to corporate sector, looking for end-to-end solutions in supply chain management with an effective involvement of farmer groups, producer companies and NGOs. 

2. Training and Entrepreneurship development

ISAP imparts training primarily focusing on skill upgradtion, entrepreneurship development and domain knowledge on commodity futures and trading.

i) Entrepreneurship Development Program

This is being provided to unemployed agriculture and allied sector graduates in 9 states under the aegis of MANAGE. During 2007-08, ISAP has trained 864 agripreneurs, formulated 438 detailed bankable projects and established 185 economic ventures.

ii) Skill Upgradation Training Program

Main objective of the training programme is to enrich skills among farmers, farm women, artisans, craftsmen and unemployed rural youth that will widen job opportunities and enhance their income generating potential. 

3. Market Linkage Program

ISAP fosters market linkages between buyers and sellers for various agriculture, horticulture crops and their allied products. This enables to bring the marketing stakeholders on one platform. Such events have witnessed effective participation from central and state government agro-marketing agencies like APEDA, National Horticulture Board, KVICs, Farmer groups/Organizations, NGOs, Producers and major Buyers of different commodities not only from within the country but also abroad. 

4. Project Planning and Development

To strategise intervention components and implementation mechanism for agricultural and rural development programmes, Project Planning and Development Division of ISAP provides consultancy and market research services to various clients including central and states governments. 

5. Industry Support

ISAP is accredited by Ministry of Commerce for issuing ‘Certificate Of Origin’ (Non-preferential). It acts as Chamber of Commerce for the benefit of exporters of agricultural produce, processed foods and also other items. 

6. Centre for Financial Inclusion

ISAP recognizes the advantages of an open and transparent trading system offered at national level electronic spot market and derivatives trading platforms in equities, commodities as well as other asset classes. So, ISAP has set up a ‘Centre for Financial Inclusion (CFI)’ to advocate policies which would make all financial markets more affordable and accessible to masses and drive the inclusive growth. Areas for advocacy would be Agriculture/Commodities, access to Capital for Small and Medium enterprises (SMES), household access to bond markets and access to currency risk management platforms.