Land Owners Are Poor Is India’s Socio-Economic Irony, Says CEO of NRAA

Addressing the seventh national cold chain summit, Former Agriculture Secretary of India Siraj Husain said, ‘Focusing on the performance of states is of more importance in case of saving wastage of overall farm to fork edible’.  He cited the example of one of the largest Indian states, Bihar and said that Bihar is a state with the third largest potato production in India but it still has a very less storage capacity. Husain who had also headed the food warehousing giant, the Food Corporation of India said that people often say that investments are not made in overall supply chain sector as people often think of policy and legal complications as a hurdle. Bihar which has no agriculture produce, marketing committee is the perfect example of this hurdle being a myth.

Husain also said that the need of actual investment must be taken care of when it comes to increasing farmers’ income. He gave the example of Bihar once again and said that even though states like Bihar and West Bengal have very fertile land, they have attracted far less investments.

UK which is believed to be the initiator of the industrial revolution in the world, has also started with agriculture revolution as a primary target, said Ashok Dalwai, CEO of National Rainfed Area Authority. Being critical of the adoption of US or UK models in India, Dalwai stressed on the need of an indigenous model for India in cold chain and overall supply chain regarding edibles. He said that there is around 34 thousand tonnes of cold storage capacity available but hardly four thousand tonnes of edibles can be transported, which is a huge gap. Dalwai has also stressed upon an unfortunate social status of India where people are poor even though they own small or marginal land holdings.       

With an estimated number of 48 to 52 per cent vegetarian people in India, capturing value chain’s real meaning has become very important said Dalwai. He also said that ‘farmer must be at a centre stage of the entire value chain if the nation wants him to get benefitted’. A single thread value chain is not sufficient for India, the country needs integration of various aspects of supply chain if wastage from farm to consumers has to be controlled, said Dalwai. States must also act to mobilise farmers’ to fill the gap in the overall supply chain as farmers need to grow what is in the demand said Dalwai. He also stressed upon the need of at least one lakh farmer producer organisations in India to create the scale of economy. Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna should use 50 per cent of its fund in infrastructure development. Even that should further be divided into 20:30 ratio to build backward and forward infrastructure linkages, respectively.

The entire session was highlighted with an integrative approach suggested by former and serving agriculture secretaries, of which Dalwai is believed to be the man behind the draft proposal of the mighty project of ‘Doubling farmers income’.