Agriculture Marketing Innovations

Innovations and Institutional Support-

Agricultural marketing ways in India are transformed as a result of globalization.

The global best practices procurement, storage, transport, packing and processing of food products are being adopted by Local, regional and national marketing systems.

All sorts of efforts to release the hold of the APMC motivated mandi system over agricultural marketing will intensify in the near future, resulting in the entry of new players taking cutting edge technology and modern supply chain processes.

Indian companies are also increasingly expected to attempt to capture big market shares of the expanding international commerce in primary commodities and processed foods and hence seek quality produce in large volumes from domestic producers.

Even if food supermarket's present market share is tiny, they are likely to become major players in the upcoming era to supply to the growing urban demand for quality farm produce.

The anticipated national legislation to create the right to a minimum quantity of food for the most of the population will bring high pressure on agricultural marketing markets and demand innovative solutions to provide for the public distribution system (PDS).

Meanwhile we have a production base characterized by millions of small producers who are finding it highly difficult to manage the increased risk of farming, growing weather uncertainties, unreliable input supplies, hassled infrastructure in the power and irrigation sectors and antiquated marketing arrangements.

The common characters of the current market scenario in agriculture may be briefed as follows:
1) The increasingly fragmented nature of production and low per capita surplus of small and marginal farmers restricts their ability to access the market to leverage better returns for their produce.
2) Globalization is an expanding domestic middle class and diversification of the food basket are driving growing corporate interest in agriculture as a source for raw material for agricultural value chains.
3) The common examples of tie-ups between farmers and processors/retailers involve medium and large farmers, with very few cases of small and marginal farmers successfully linking up with corporate players.

Extending help to smallholder agriculture and deprived producer groups should clearly address these gaps and base itself on the below given principles:
(i) It should address risks faced by small producers and help to reduce them.
(ii) It should target the moving small producers further up the value chain to increase their returns on investment and their economic security.
(iii) It should recognize the importance of small producers in the value chain and facilitate their inclusion in the wider economy.
(iv) It should aim to improve the terms of trade of small producers with the market.

Source: http://planningcommission.gov.in/