Farm Income Commision, Politician speaks and Zameen Organic

1. M S Swaminathan, who needs no introduction on this blog, talks about his expectations from the regular budget. He suggests that all political parties commit to establishing a Farm Income Commission which can go into the totality of the income of farmers from crop and animal husbandry, fisheries, agro-forestry and agro-processing, so as to ensure a minimum take home income to farmers. He also emphasizes on the need for ensuring minimum support price not only for wheat and rice but for a wide range of millets, pulses, oil seeds and tuber crops. Further provision needs to be made for establishing a national grid of warehouses for grains and cold storage structures for perishable commodities. The prevailing mismatch between production and post-harvest technologies should be ended.


2. Sharad Pawar's column on commodityonline. Sounds like a pre-election campaign.

3. An interesting story on Zameen Organic, a farmer-owned private limited organization aimed at closer collaboration between farmers. Zameen Organic is a pioneering marketing company for Fair Trade, Organic and Pesticide Free cotton in India. They have partnered with Yes Bank to ensure credit flow for their initiatives. The link of their website: Zameen Organic.

Sugarcane SMP, Bill Gates letter, Value Chain Financing and Conservation Farming

1. The sugar industry in the private and the cooperative sectors have united to pressure the government to announce high support prices for the commodity. Is it not surprising? In this cruel capitalist world, people are fighting to increase the price of commodity that they have to buy!

2. Bill Gates writes about his vision about agriculture in Africa in his annual letter. Very valid points brought forward.

3. This interesting article in ET talks about Value chain financing for agriculture sector. In value chain financing, a bank enters into an arrangement with some or all the players in a particular value chain to extend finance to them. A value chain basically constitute of three levels - farmers producing the primary commodity, an SME or an agent acting as intermediately or adding value to the produce and the large firms using this as raw materials.

4. From business standard: Over a thousand agricultural experts from around the world, who had gathered in Delhi last week for the fourth congress on conservation agriculture, deliberated an issue that is vital for sustaining high-growth agriculture without clashing with the environment.

PrimeAg, Farmers-turn-Managers, Food Outsourcing and Sugar Prices

1. An article on Australian food company PrimeAg which borne out with a vision to meet the world's food security. An example of corporate farming we may soon see in india.

2. IIMA is launching a course on Food supply chain management to upgrade the knowledge of the farmers. "The course will cover all challenges and bottle-necks of the supply chain from the times the seed is sowed, till it reaches the consumer. Also, exports and reaching the food to poor will be discussed."

3. Mr Piruz Khambatta, Chairman & Managing Director, Rasna Pvt Ltd says that the food outsourcing business from India has an opportunity of $5 billion as of today. “Only six per cent of the total amount of food produced in the country is processed. This has led to an annual loss of Rs 33,000 crore in the agricultural sector through perishable commodities.”

“Agri business for rural India can do what Information Technology has done for urban India. India should be promoted as the food factory of the world in terms of both production and marketing,” he said.

3. This article in business-standard suggests that raising the retail price for sugar is the only and surest shot to resolve all the problems of the sugar industry.

Advanta deal, Weeds and Advani's promises

1. Agricultural seed technology firm Advanta India Ltdand U.S.-based Arcadia Biosciences have signed a deal to research and develop nitrogen-use efficient (NUE) sorghum, a feed crop, the firms said in a joint statement.

NUE sorghum can significantly cut the amount ot nitrogen farmers have to use, the companies said. Sorghum is also used as a bio-fuel.

2. Weeds are not that bad after all. This article in The Statesman tries to put across this point. “Weeds are important for maintaining crop yield as they protect crops from pest attacks and also maintain soil fertility. Measures like crop rotation to manage weeds and selective removal of weeds should be adopted rather than applying broad-spectrum herbicides"

3. BJP leader and prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani has promised major overhaul of the agriculture policy and schemes, in case he could lead the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to power at the centre in the coming General election. These included a massive hike in the public spending on the sector and initiative revolutionary new measures to promote agriculture-based based value-addition industries in rural areas. Advani said that in case the NDA was elected to power, the development of rural infrastructure – roads, power, irrigation, storage facilities, etc. – would receive massive fillip.

NPM Vegetables, Polyhouse Farming, Consulting via Satellite, Carbon Trade

1. The demand of NPM vegetables, i.e. non-pesticidal management, is high. These vegetables are farm fresh and free of pesticides. Consumers are also happy to pay premium for such vegetables.

2. The Himachal Pradesh government is promoting farming inside modern greenhouses called polyhouses to improve the earning potential of farmers in the state, especially during the harsh winters. Polyhouses are based on the greenhouse concept to let in heat and light, while preventing the heat from getting out. But instead of the glass on a greenhouse roof, polyhouses are made of cheaper polythene or plastic. By reducing evaporation, they also allow farmers to use sprinkler and drip irrigation systems, thus saving water.

3. Farmers of Northeast can now interact with top scientists of the country and seek solutions to their problems related to farming, market, health and weather dynamics from their nearest Village Resource Centres (VRC).

4. Carbon emissions are increasingly at the forefront of policy issues, and experts say agricultural practices could play a role in decreasing emissions while providing farmers with a new cash crop.

Commodity Future, Prahalad and water infrastructure

1. Do farmers really benefit from commodity future market. They may not do so directly but indirectly they get affected as brought forward by this article. The author also gives example of Mondragon Cooperatives of Spain to put emphasis on his point.

2. C.K. Prahalad discusses on opportunities in agriculture - "Till now the focus has been on pre-harvest elements like fertilisers and pesticides. But India has serious post-harvest issues of wastage, poor preservation of perishable products and inadequate access to markets. Companies like ITC, Amul, Reliance and Bharti are investing to address these issues. And it is benefiting farmers. Amul does not waste anything. You can do something similar in products as varied as shrimp, arecanut, coconut. But you can't simply replicate the Amul model, you will need to build separate structures."

3. Something that we need to do in India as well - implementation of integrated water, agriculture and energy programmes to enhance sustainable development.

Fight over Minimum Support Price

Minimum support prices fixed by the government continue to be a matter of debate for some right reasons.

Sugarcane farmers are asking for increase in the SMP (statutory minimum price) for sugarcane. Their logic: MSP of wheat and other crops has been increased by about 37% which that of sugarcane remains the same. Very valid point as the cost of cultivating has not remain same and has grown in more or less the same proportion to that of wheat and other crops.

MSP of cotton has also been in lime lite ever since they were declared just before the economic slowdown began. Private players are no longer ready to pay the MSP, which is very high according to them. CCI (Cotton Corporation of India) had to come in fill the gap in the supply-demand equation to keep the MSP alive. This is the reason why CCI has been able to procure lots of cotton.

Several people have raised their voice about the ways in which MSP prices ought to be fixed. Here is the link to the article in Businessline by Sharad Joshi.

My take: Its best to leave the prices to be fixed by market forces.

Rubber, GM debate and Rice intensification

1. Rubber plantations are taking strong roots in Maharashtra's coastal Konkan region, thanks to a salubrious climate, improved yield and the state's own initiative to popularise the cash crop. And the fact that several farmers from Kerala, the traditional home for rubber plantations, have invested in the business in the coastal districts is only helping the trend catch on further.

2. Update on GM debate: Environment ministry is for the GM crops like Bt Brinjal but as we noted down some days back, health minister is against any such moves.

3. Rice Intensification technology known as System of Rice Intensification (SRI) for having bigger yields with less seeds, water and fertilizers is gaining popularity in India. SRI is a novel approach to increase the rice production by constructively reducing the capital fertilizer, labour and water and promoting more abundance, diversity and activity of soil biota in and around the plant’’s rhizosphere.

Gold Rush, Vertical Farming and Bt corn

1. Rich countries and companies are eying land in poorer countries as an investment in future for food security. Some poor countries are happy to trade it with other desirable options like dollar and oil. More details here.

2. This article discusses about rooftop farming and vertical farming. Rooftop farming is nothing but planting the crops on the rooftop. Though it sounds very simple, it is not so. Check out this company called SkyVegetables. Vertical farming was coined by Dickson Despommier, an environmental health sciences professor at Columbia University. His idea is to grow and harvest food in multistory structures specifically designed for this purpose. Though it is an interesting idea, but an expensive solution.

3. Monsanto sees India adopting bt corn in five years.

Farm profitability and Olives

1. ET carries an article about profitability in farm sector.

2. Businessline carries an interesting story on Olives from Italy.

Slowdown, Targeting farmer

Slowdown has becoming a buzzword for lunch discussions nowadays. Its difficult to find any newspaper front page without a mention or hint towards this global economic turmoil. However, for rural India, whose dependence is on agriculture, global downturn hardly matters. Although it may have some impact with a lag (eg. textile industry suffering, cotton prices falling and so on), but the relative difference is not much. And so companies are targeting rural India - as this article in livemint says. "due to its primary dependence on domestic consumption rather than exports, rural India would be even more insulated, given that almost 60% of its households are dependent on agriculture, where fortunes fluctuate more on the basis of vagaries of the monsoon than those of the Sensex or Lehman Brothers and AIG! Even the increasing spiral of inflation, with its direct impact on prices of vegetables, would indeed benefit the farmer, fetching him a better price for his produce."

Not quite true as I mentioned earlier. The prices are falling and the effect goes to source i.e. agricultural commodities. Government is already finding it difficult to maintain the MSPs. There is another interesting article about how government meddling is creating the slowdown in the agricultural sector. The first few lines have got some sense of humour, but sadly it is true partially - " How will Indian agribusiness fare over the next six months? The answer lies not in demand-supply, volatility in international markets, credit supply or weather. It all depends of sarkari mood".

Blah Blah Blah

Union agriculture and food minister Sharad Pawar is all for stimulating private investment in the horticulture sector to boost the economic condition of farmers in the midst of a global financial gloom. He says "Government can play a supporting role. But government and farmers’ cooperatives cannot provide modern technology. For that, you need private players"

How can you expect private investments when you keep meddling with everything related to agriculture. People do private investmnets to earn profit.

You fix the prices to reduce inflation but your MSP finds it difficult to hold. You can do great justice to you post if you dont do anything!! I hope cricket keep you busy.

Food Security, Lending to Food Processing

1. This article in Taipei Times is puzzling - it points out that countries like Ukraine and Argentina have great potential for farming but are not reaping the benefits because of government meddling in exports and price-fixing. What beats me is that it blames that "Governments such as China, India and Vietnam fail to realize that restricting exports leads farmers to invest and produce less".

2. From BusineessLine: In a bid to bail out the food processing industry from the current financial crisis, the Government has allocated Rs 1,000 crore to the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard). It will utilise the fund to refinance banks that lend to the food processing sector.

3. According to United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the current financial crisis will adversely affect agricultural sectors in many countries, including India and other developing countries. Lower international commodity prices have not yet translated into lower domestic food prices in most low-income countries, it added. The FAO report further noted that world agriculture was facing serious long-term issues and challenges that need to be urgently addressed. These include land and water constraints, low investments in rural infrastructure and agricultural research, expensive agricultural inputs relative to farm-gate prices and little adaptation to climate change.

Government policies, PDS and B2B meeting

1. A call for change in Government policy in agriculture in Indian Express. There should be more emphasis on investments in marketing and processing infrastructure, on expanding and modernizing the trading centers and on increasing the rural connectivity.

2. According to this article, "to give entry to various giant grain corporations, the Indian government slowly and systematically weakened its Public Distribution System (PDS) by slowing down grain procurement, especially wheat". This is leading to food crisis, specially for the people below poverty line.

3. B2B meetings for Agriculture and Food processing in India - The Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC), in partnership with BCI - global leader of B2B meetings and professional events - will be setting up a first international trade show dedicated to agriculture machinery and food processing on March 4-6, 2009 and fully contribute to this process.

The show will combine a 3 day exhibition for Indian and international companies to showcase their products and capabilities and a matchmaking service to facilitate contacts. They will feature their technologies for agriculture and food processing.

God's own crop, CCI to buy cotton and Agri-sector alliance

1. Millets are getting the charm back again after finding the way in Indian supermarkets and increasingly becoming part of urban diet. Decant herald carries an interesting article on Millets like jowar, bajra, ragi etc, which are also called "God's own crop"

2. Cotton Corporation of India (CCI) has assured Punjab government that it would purchase maximum quantity of cotton from the mandis in the state so that the farmers could get remunerative price of their produce.

3. Indian commerce minister Kamal Nath calls for alliance among developing nations in Agriculture sector to fight against the subsidies provided by rich nations.

Agriculture growth, useless MSP and Australian wheat

1. The Hindu Businessline writes about slow growth in agriculture. Agricultural policies are to be blamed.

2. Farmers are not benefiting in spite of high MSP prices as open market prices fall much lower. Manipulative actions by traders also hit the profitability.

3. Indian mills can have custom grown wheat from Australia and enter into contract farming and long term agreements. South India flour mills, in particular, prefer Australian wheat not only for its quality but also due to logistical advantage.

Conservation agriculture, FDI in agriculture and Agri-entrpreneurs

1. Business standard covers this interesting story on new farming techniques to improve land productivity as well as to reverse the climate change. Suggestions include rice-wheat cropping sequence, zero tillage agriculture, raised bed planting, laser land-lavelling and drip irrigation.

2. It is surprising to hear the suggestion coming from a minister to get foreign investment in agriculture. The food processing minister says that it is the "next sunrise sector".

3. Interesting story covered by ET on Agri-entrepreneurs. It covers various ventures like Satnam Agri Products by Mandip Singh producing premium potato chips, Minchy brand on wines by Girish Minocha and Pawas Canning by Hemant Desai exporting mango pulp to Japan. It also covers Nisarg Nirman Agro Products growing and selling exotic fruits to five start hotels, Jalbindu Agri Tech by Rahul Gala growing and selling dates using high echnology and "Best Roses" by Kumar Patel.

GM debate, Stuck farm insurance claims

1. Central chronicle says that greater measures are required to test GM crops for safety.

2. Farmers insurance claims are stuck because of non-availability of funds from state.

Jai Reform, Jai Kisan

1. Indian Express has got this interesting column about the denial of renewal of license to Metro Cash and Carry. "Those who shout loudest that farmers need a good deal are frequently the same people who protest loudest about big retail chains"

2. Farmers have started moving towards cash-generating crops and vegetables. Vegetable production has increased by 141 per cent in the past five years leading to an increase in local consumption and exports.

3. Press Digest - from Reuters

Stuck in the moment

A post dedicated to things which see no light at the end of tunnel.

1. Talks at WTO never seem to end. Agriculture negotiations resumed at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on Thursday, but comments from diplomats showed it would be difficult to bridge gaps.

2. Tussle between farmers and SEZs continue. If SEZs go tlhrough farmers loose their land and livelihood, if they dont industrialization suffers.

3. A government official says that 4% growth in agriculture is needed to sustain economic growth of 8%. What is government doing to make it possible?