India has long become self sufficient in agriculture, but now it is time to pass on the fruits of self sufficiency to our farmers and make them market resilient, said Dasharath L Tambhale, Director – Agriculture (ATMA) Commissionerate of Agriculture cum Head, PIU Agriculture, SMART Project. He was speaking at the inauguration of the 14th AgriCorp Conference organised by Bombay Chamber held on September 11 & 12, 2023 at the CIDCO Exhibition & Convention Centre, Vashi, Navi Mumbai. Tambhale added, “Agriculture Department’s SMART project was started to develop a comprehensive and inclusive agri value chain. Maharashtra is home to nearly one third of the FPOs in the country. We need to mobilise these FPOs to develop their value chains. The Department has initiated several projects which subsidises warehousing, transport, cold chain infra, etc. There is also the POCRA (Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture) in association with World Bank to develop climate resilience in agriculture.”
The AgriCorp Conference was themed Farm to Shelf: Enhancing Market Linkages.
In her Keynote address, Dr Usha B Zehr, Chairman & Executive Director, Grow Indigo spoke about Green Credits which is beyond just Carbon Credits. “We need to bring in sustainability in agriculture, improve farmer incomes without environmental impact and enhance market linkages. Carbon is the new cash crop in agriculture” she said. Speaking about how Indian agriculture has more of small holder farmers, Dr Zehr added that any regenerative farming initiatives should target these farmers.
Ritesh Tiwari, President, Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry and CFO, Hindustan Unilever & Unilever South Asia said, “Indian agriculture, contributing to 18%5 of GDP and 46%6 of employment, is complex. While the green revolution followed by the white revolution helped us achieve the status of food sufficiency, we now need to talk about an “income revolution”. Looking at the end-to-end value chain, the sector is ripe for disruption benefitting everyone in the value chain. Backed by regulatory support, there are 3 key drivers of disruption that are likely: efficient transportation and storage; digitalisation and farmer financing on the back of digitised transaction data; and innovations stemming from sustainability and productivity needs.”
Rajan Raje, CEO, Nichem Solutions & Chairman – Agriculture and Food Processing Committee, Bombay Chamber and Sandeep Khosla, Director General, Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industry, were also present at the inaugural ceremony. The conference saw the release of Analytique, a Bombay Chamber publication featuring expert insights on Financing Rural Bharat.
The AgriCorp Conference saw many interesting knowledge sessions over the two days like Retail Dynamics, Agri Startups (Seed to Shelf), the Global Marketplace, Shared value Creation, Agri Warehousing and Logistics, Leveraging Technology for Market Linkages, Compliances for taking Indian products Global, Funding & Govt Schemes.
The Conference was organised in association with Kisan and supported by SBI, Rallis India, Celcius, BASF, Godrej Agrovet, Nabard, NICHEM, agribazaar, IDBI Bank and SatSure.
