Smallholder farmers in Maharashtra face persistent challenges: fragmented landholdings, poor market access, and limited infrastructure. Women, despite being central to agricultural labour, are often excluded from leadership and decision-making. While community-based organisations (CBOs) bring together a small group of farmers and offer grassroot empowerment, many lack the capacity to operate as sustainable, business-ready institutions.

Palladium has been awarded two catalytic projects under the Government of Maharashtra’s flagship initiative, the Hon. Balasaheb Thackeray Agribusiness and Rural Transformation (SMART) Program. These projects aim to reach over 240,000 farmers, transforming rural livelihoods through inclusive value chain development, institutional strengthening, and improved access to capital and markets.

SMART promotes inclusive, market-driven agribusiness development through public-private partnerships. Its goals include increasing farmer incomes, improving productivity, and building resilient value chains by strengthening Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), enhancing financial access, and engaging the private sector. A key focus is empowering smallholder farmers—especially women—via infrastructure, digital systems, and institutional convergence.

“These projects mark a shift from subsistence to scale, exclusion to empowerment, and isolated efforts to systems-level change,” says Amit Patjoshi, CEO, Palladium India.

Building Resilient Agri-Economies

In the first project, Palladium serves as the Technical Support Agency for SMART’s Value Chain Development Sub-Projects. These aim to boost productivity, profitability, and resilience across Maharashtra’s agricultural economy. Five Project Implementation Units (PIUs) support Farmer Producer Corporations in accessing grants and implementing sub-projects.

The second project supports the Program Implementation Unit of the Village Social Transformation Foundation (VSTF), a non-profit company wholly owned by the Government of Maharashtra. VSTF works in drought-prone and underserved communities to transform villages affected by natural disasters and socio-economic challenges into model villages. Through partnerships with corporates and philanthropies, VSTF addresses development goals such as digital connectivity, housing, water security, skill training, agriculture, education, and health.

Both projects share a common vision: build farmer-led rural institutions that are competitive and sustainable.

From Collectives to Competitors

Whether working with Farmer Producer Companies, Cluster Level Federations, or Cooperatives, Palladium focuses on strengthening governance, business acumen, and market access. Support includes financial compliance, branding, business planning, and marketing—helping rural collectives evolve into competitive agri-enterprises.

“These projects will help collectives move into high-value markets through quality improvement, product development, and strong market linkages,” says Biswajit Behera, Associate Director, Palladium India. “They also promote sustainability by connecting CBOs to financial institutions and enabling access to working capital—one of the biggest hurdles for farmer groups.”

Putting Women at the Centre

With over 80% of farms in Maharashtra being small and family-owned, women form the backbone of agricultural labor but remain underrepresented in leadership. These projects aim to change that—positioning women as entrepreneurs, board members, and agribusiness leaders.

Initiatives include managerial training, gender-mainstreamed business models, and Commodity Stewardship Councils—platforms that bring together producers, buyers, and government actors to foster inclusive value chains.

This aligns with the state’s goal to expand women’s roles in quality assurance, processing, and trade.

Driving Livelihoods Through Demand-Led Growth

The approach is market-first: identifying where the demand is and aligning production to match. By developing end-to-end value chains and investible CBOs, the projects enable integration with private sector supply chains, retail networks, and export markets. This ensures the efforts of farmers are focused on producing what the market wants, bringing much-needed revenue to the community and enabling government investment to shift to the next priority.

Early-stage support includes training in business operations, digital tools, marketing, and quality standards. Over time, this builds diversified income streams for farmers, including those in climate-vulnerable regions. A complementary investment model leverages CSR and public-private co-investment to deepen reach and resilience.

Creating Impact at Scale

A defining feature of this engagement is convergence—bringing together departments, donors, and market actors under a unified framework. Palladium is streamlining coordination across state, district, and village levels, including working with financial institutions to reduce loan sanction timelines from months to weeks.

“With over 97% of India’s farmers classified as smallholders, these projects offer a scalable model for rural transformation,” says Patjoshi. “They go beyond skill-building to deliver business handholding, capital access, and market integration—elements often missing in public sector programs.”

As Maharashtra tackles deep-rooted barriers in its agri-rural economy, these SMART projects represent more than technical support—they are a blueprint for regenerative, inclusive growth.