About Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited
The food crisis of the early 60s mobilised Indias farmers and the founding fathers of a `young India to look for longer-term solutions. International organisations, including the American Cooperative Study Team, conducted fertiliser feasibility studies in India to increase production. The cooperative sector in India at that time was distributing 70 per cent of the chemical fertilisers consumed in the country. This sector had adequate infrastructure to distribute fertilisers but had no production facilities. With the introduction of multi-agency approach by the Government of India in the distribution of fertilisers during 1967, the private trade also entered the field of fertiliser distribution. The private sector production units provided more opportunities to the distribution network of private trade and gave secondary preference to the cooperatives in the matter of supplies. Due to this development, the cooperatives started getting less supplies of the fertilisers.
To overcome this limitation and also to bridge the growing demand for the fertilisers in the country, a new cooperative was conceived. The notion of the cooperative was especially appealing for its core values of self-help, accountability, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity. In the year 1964, the Cooperative League of USA proposed to the Government of India that the American Cooperatives were interested to collaborate with Indian Cooperatives in setting up fertiliser production capacity.
The idea appealed to the Government of India and eminent cooperators of the country. As a result, Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) was conceived and registered on November 3, 1967, as a multi-unit cooperative society with the primary objective of production and distribution of fertilisers. The U.S. Cooperatives through Cooperative Fertiliser International (CFI) provided a financial aid besides technical know-how to IFFCO.1967 saw proposals submitted for Ammonia, Urea and NPK plants, notably at Kalol and Kandla in Gujarat, and on 3rd November 1967, IFFCO was registered as a multi-unit cooperative.