Capacity building of office bearers of farmer producer companies assume great importance as well managed FPOs have proved to be successful. Efficient management of FPOs has been well recognized by researchers and promoters. Hence, agencies promoting FPOs have invested time, funds and effort in designing teaching, training and capacity building strategies to inculcate essential capabilities among office bearers and board of directors. But the lecture method and exposure visit were quite inadequate. A need is felt to identify core competencies and best management practices and design innovative capacity building programmes & manuals for enabling office bearers of FPOs. This study was conducted with the objective of assessing degree of competency of office bearers of FPOs and identify the most essential competencies required for managing FPOs for better performance. An attempt was also made to specify capacity building techniques and tools for competence enhancement among office bearers. In this empirical study with ex-post facto research design, data were collected from 80 office bearers of twelve purposively selected FPOs from NCR of Delhi in March 2021. Since competency is a measure of the ability in successful accomplishment of a task, a competency inventory of 25 statements (on a five-point rating) was developed for the study. Factor analysis could extract six factors of managerial skills as core managerial competencies – planning & business development, marketing management, controlling and managing business operations, democratic leadership, and managing finances for efficient management of FPOs. To make office bearers of FPOs competent, capacity building strategies must be effective enough to promote practicing best management practices The innovative capacity building strategies included reflective teamwork activities, simulation games, role-plays, workshop, and pilot project work to imbibe both the spirit and value of best managerial competencies among office bearers of FPOs. These results have implications for trainers and promoting agencies.

Keyword: Capacity building; Efficient management of FPOs; Managerial skills.