Wednesday, June 11, 2008

corporate Farming


Corporate farming is a modern agriculture issue, and encompasses not only the farm itself, but also the entire chain of agriculture-related business, including seed supply, agrichemicals, food processing, machinery, storage, transport, distribution, marketing, advertising, and retail sales.
There are corporate in the field like Ballarpur Industries, JK Papers and Wimco in eucalyptus and poplar trees, Green Agro Pack, VST Natural Products, Global Green, Intergarden India, Kempscity Agro Exports and Sterling Agro in gherkins, United Breweries in barley, Nijjer Agro in tomato, Tarai Foods in vegetables, M Todd in mint, and Namdhari Seeds in seeds. There are also various government and semi-government agencies involved. Financial institutions and banks assisting contract farming.
Several State governments, in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, are actively promoting corporate farming, changing laws to enable and support it, and providing companies interested in it with a variety of incentives, including lifting of land ceilings, subsidies and tax rebates.

In my view, the problem is that the Indian farmer is still illiterate to understand clearly that contract farming. The corporate farmer should not treat as Contracted Employee rather than implementation partner. The farm land should be controlled by the independent farmer and input costs like farm machinery, crop insurance,fertilizers,irrigation,pesticides, fuel, and seeds should be born by the corporates.If necessary the government should be flexible on land ceiling for Corporates.Farm Production management contracts between corporate companies and farmers should be transparent and mutual benefited, that should cover crop selection, provision of inputs, production methods, sales channels, buyers and minimum guarantee price. I am impressed of farmer’s partner model by CALYPSO FOODS PRIVATE LIMITED .