Despite the nationwide lock down almost for two months now, the fertilizer cooperative IFFCO has made sure that farmers are equipped with proper resources to achieve their task, claims a press release sent by IFFCO PR Wednesday evening.
Taking advantage of its nation-wide footprint and its network of nearly 35,000 cooperatives, IFFCO launched its ‘Break the Corona chain’ campaign. The focus of the campaign was to educate farmers about the virus transmission, equip them with masks and sanitizers and spread the message of hygiene and social distancing.
“During the campaign, awareness programs were organized at more than 1400 locations benefiting up to 6.5 Lakh people”, the note reads.
Explaining the strategy to Indian Cooperative, IFFCO’s MD Dr U.S Awasthi said,” IFFCO is a cooperative and coming to the aid of the community in the time of need is our duty and part of our organizational DNA.”
Awasthi went on to say that “We have mobilized the entire marketing team, group companies and the entire IFFCO ecosystem for this effort. IFFCO has over 400 field officers across India who have certain districts/areas that they manage. These field officers are our ‘corona troopers’, the men at the front line responsible for education and relief distribution. These ‘corona troopers’ are reaching out to the farmers and the community online 
IFFCO’s all five plants Kalol, Kandla, Aonla, Phulpur and Paradeep remain operational with staff following the social distancing guidelines. Also, the distribution network and IFFCO’s field officers are working with extra caution to make plant nutrition available to the farmers through member cooperative societies and IFFCO Bazar outlets.
These ‘corona troopers’ have distributed more than 15 lakh vitamin-C tablets, 3 lakh medicated soaps, 3 lakh masks, 52,000 sanitizers, 10,000 gloves and a lot of medical kits till date. Additionally, 3 lakh food packets and 30,000 ration kits were distributed to the needy.
Yogendra Kumar, Marketing Director, IFFCO who is supervising this campaign said, “The effort has been on multiple fronts. We are also taking the help of local and regional influencers like local politicians, officials and progressive farmers. Apart from that, we are also running a social media campaign around these messages”, he added.
To give an example on IFFCOs community participation approach, the release adds that in remote areas of Assam and Uttarakhand it mobilised several women self-help groups who are producing masks from textile material and these women together made around 10,000 masks.
Besides these efforts on the ground, IFFCO also contributed Rs 25 crore to the PM-Cares fund which was acknowledged by the PM through a tweet.
And lastly, IFFCO has offered the template for other corporates and companies in India who wish to contribute towards breaking the chain of CoronaVirus in Rural India. This is especially important at a time when millions of workers are returning from cities to their hometowns and villages, the release adds.
