Indian State of Telangana to benefit from Centre's Mega Food Parks

As part of its Mega Food Park Scheme, The Ministry of Food Processing Industries, Government of India has laid the foundation stone of the first Mega Food Park in the newly formed State of Telangana

at Nizamabad. The Ministry has also sanctioned two more Mega Food Parks to be set-up in Khammam & Mahboobnagar districts of Telangana.

The Ministry is focusing on boosting the Food Processing Sector so that agriculture sector grows exponentially and becomes the engine of growth to drive the “Make in India” initiative of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Keen on the creation of modern infrastructure for food processing and encouraging private investment, the Ministry is planning to create a value chain from the farm to the market with strong forward and backward linkages through a cluster-based approach.

The first Mega Food Park in Telangana promoted by M/s Smart Agro Food Park Pvt. Ltd; will be set up with the project cost of Rs. 108.95 crore in an area of 78 acres. The Mega Food Park will have strong backward linkage and three Primary Processing Centres (PPCs) will be set up at Medchal, Medak and Nalgonda. On completion, the park will have facilities of 5000 MT Multi Commodity Cold Storage, 5000 MT Raw Material Warehouse, 5000 MT Finished Good Warehouse, 5000 MT Grain Silos, 500 MT Deep Freeze, 20 MT/day Turmeric Processing Facility and modern food testing lab.

The Park is expected to provide direct and indirect employment to about 6000 people and benefit about 30,000 farmers in its catchment area. 

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M-Commerce in India: Future Prospects

www.irctc.co.in – The official website of the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation has revolutionized the scope and dimension of the Indian e-commerce market which otherwise would not have taken its first baby step towards the future. 

Basking in the glory of the above enterprise from the Indian Government, few travel e-commerce companies like RedBus (www.redbus.in) for bus tickets and Makemytrip (www.makemytrip.com) for flights have tasted fair amount of success. 

However, e-commerce in India is still in a nascent stage. Conclusions from a report released by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), suggest that the total Indian e-commerce market is around Rs 50,000 crore, of which 80 per cent or Rs 40,000 crore is captured by travel e-commerce (online train, bus and airline tickets) while retail e-com or non-travel is only 15 per cent or Rs 8,000 crore.  

With the availability of feature phones or the “smart phones,” Mobile Commerce or m-commerce is also on the rise along with e-commerce where the mobile handset is used as a means to enter into an online transaction. 

With more than 65% of people in India using feature phones, there is an untapped opportunity here too to offer services to subscribers to go beyond the ticketing purposes. 

The future of mobile commerce bears great potential. Approximately 70% of the Indian population is below the age of 40. Of this, a sizable chunk is the youth in the age group of 14-18 who are devoid of a self Bank account and are spendthrifts. M-commerce, especially in India will thrive on this naïve age group and their lifestyle. 

However, is the Indian financial eco-system and mobile infrastructure really prepared to cash-in such a boom which is being driven by high-end marketing and advertising fervor? 

As of now, the answer is NO. Achieving this requires a concerted effort from the bankers and the service providers to ensure and enrich consumer experience with security by expanding the system to accommodate more volumes to benefit all stakeholders and devise law-abiding guidelines to control flow of money and prevent fraud. 

Marginally though, with investors gaining confidence in the growth of the e-com and m-com markets and pumping funds into ventures like flipkart.com, naaptol.com and junglee.com with additional features like “Cash On Delivery,” experts hope that by the year 2025, the total e-com market will reach at least Rs 4,00,000 crore and the share of retail will be half at Rs 2,00,000 crore.  

E-commerce in India is here to stay and grow exponentially over the years

Indian Agriculture must embrace biotech crops & regulated markets

India has less than 4% of World’s arable land but it has to feed 18% of the global population. With Yields per hectare of food grains, fruits and vegetables far below global averages and 80% of landholdings being less than two acres, it is essential to find economically viable solutions to improve farmer incomes.

Agriculture has been the mainstay of the Indian economy and during these times of recession, a concerted effort for increasing agricultural productivity through technology infusion and market-led interventions is the need of the hour.

Technologies for higher production and productivity, energy saving, environment protection etc. needs to be infused into the sector.

BIOTECH CROPS

The global spread of biotech crops has been recognized as the fastest spread agricultural technology to date (A 94-fold increase in hectarage from 1.7m hectares in 1996 to 160m hectares in 2011 – 15% more than area cultivated in India). Nearly 30 countries grow genetically modified crops of soybean, cotton, maize and other crops across all continents.

So far India has benefited only from Bt. Cotton. However, development of biotech crops for a wide variety of crops is progressing all over the country in both public and private sector.

COMMODITIES MARKETS

Agri-business can transform Indian agriculture, but there are too many challenges that inhibit greater investment. The commodities market is very volatile and is often affected by weather, local and global trade policies and human conflicts.

We need to create a value chain for each agri-commodity. In the context of emerging food processing and feed industries, it is essential to consider how food and feed production can be stabilized with assured and enhanced income to farmers without too much price rise as also through employment generation. For this, biotech crops and their public acceptance holds the key.

Current estimate of benefit to India with a single biotech crop is about US$ 15bn. The need is a definite change in the mind-set and greater acceptance of technology to change the image of Indian agriculture which is often blamed for lower growth rates.

We need more efforts to build public awareness of benefits of such new biotech products through NGOs and other regulatory bodies and make the public know that the regulatory system in the country is one of the most stringent in the world and as such there is no room for undue fear.

If the policy environment is supportive, India can set an example of new bio-economy to the rest of the world, especially to the developing one.