Sep 01 2014 : Mirror (Pune)
A farmer friendly focus
GOURI AGTEY ATHALE
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The supply chain, from the grower to the consumer, is inefficient and skewed in favour of entrenched monopoly GOURI AGTEY ATHALE WRITES ON WHAT MAKES PUNE INC TICK Likedhated her column? Write to Gouri Athale at punemirror.feedback@gmail.com
The next time you silently curse all those fruit vendors who have set up stalls well into carriageways, to the point where it becomes a traffic hazard, think of what this means. That our consumption of fruit has increased, a sign of increasing prosperity. Ditto vegetables and flowers: Vendors of these horticultural items, too, set up informal stalls or squat on roadsides, hawking their produce.While this is a good sign, signalling more people moving up the economic ladder, spare a thought for the grower. This might be a tad difficult when you are cursing these folks for gumming up the traffic. But think of the farmers, and even us customers, who have got the short of the stick in this “opening up“ of the economy. It's improved the buyers' economic conditions but left the growers at the monopolistic mercy of the traders' body, the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee, the APMC.
We all know that the farmer gets a mere pittance for the horticultural produce she breaks her back growing. The actual difference between what she gets at the APMC and what we pay at the retail level is a huge three to seven times! Having no surety over the market, that what she grows will sell, and being small, producing a few crates of say tomato rather than truckloads, she is at the mercy of the legally constituted monopoly.
Growers of horticultural produce, that is, vegetables, fruit and flowers, point to the intrinsic disadvantage they face: by definition, their produce has to be consumed fresh or it spoils.Processing it to increase shelf life is a much later stage: the infrastructure for this is woefully inadequate for current demand. With demand growing, growers can't grow enough. And growers insist we should follow the China model in this as in so many other fields: Eat fresh food fresh and in season. We don't need to process our horticultural produce.
The supply chain, from the grower to the end consumer (us), is inefficient and growers allege that it is skewed in favour of the current entrenched monopoly, the APMCs, to ensure that it remains so. Logistics is also controlled to be in efficient. While changes in the APMC Act are supposed to be in the offing, they can't come soon enough for these farmers. If these farmers can take their produce anywhere, at any time, to get the best price, there would be an incentive for them to match rising consumer demand by growing more.
Strangely, though, the supply chain of imported fruit is good! You can get fruit imported from New Zealand or the US in remote locations but not fruit which may be growing a few hundred miles away.
Among the issues which need tackling is not just the dismantling of the monopoly of the APMC, to make it one of the several outlets for the farmer to sell to, but also standardisation in weights, measures, packaging and product quality. After all, global fruit companies put their names on produce they source from growers: that is the kind of product quality assurance that is needed.
Taking one small step in this direction is a group from Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar who want their strawberries to be sold across western India. But they are waiting first for the legal framework which abolish the monopoly of the APMC. Their projections are based on the belief that the Act will be modified before the November-December season when strawberries hit the market, so they can choose a channel through which to address a larger market. In essence, they are saying, let a thousand flowers bloom.
We all know that the farmer gets a mere pittance for the horticultural produce she breaks her back growing. The actual difference between what she gets at the APMC and what we pay at the retail level is a huge three to seven times! Having no surety over the market, that what she grows will sell, and being small, producing a few crates of say tomato rather than truckloads, she is at the mercy of the legally constituted monopoly.
Growers of horticultural produce, that is, vegetables, fruit and flowers, point to the intrinsic disadvantage they face: by definition, their produce has to be consumed fresh or it spoils.Processing it to increase shelf life is a much later stage: the infrastructure for this is woefully inadequate for current demand. With demand growing, growers can't grow enough. And growers insist we should follow the China model in this as in so many other fields: Eat fresh food fresh and in season. We don't need to process our horticultural produce.
The supply chain, from the grower to the end consumer (us), is inefficient and growers allege that it is skewed in favour of the current entrenched monopoly, the APMCs, to ensure that it remains so. Logistics is also controlled to be in efficient. While changes in the APMC Act are supposed to be in the offing, they can't come soon enough for these farmers. If these farmers can take their produce anywhere, at any time, to get the best price, there would be an incentive for them to match rising consumer demand by growing more.
Strangely, though, the supply chain of imported fruit is good! You can get fruit imported from New Zealand or the US in remote locations but not fruit which may be growing a few hundred miles away.
Among the issues which need tackling is not just the dismantling of the monopoly of the APMC, to make it one of the several outlets for the farmer to sell to, but also standardisation in weights, measures, packaging and product quality. After all, global fruit companies put their names on produce they source from growers: that is the kind of product quality assurance that is needed.
Taking one small step in this direction is a group from Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar who want their strawberries to be sold across western India. But they are waiting first for the legal framework which abolish the monopoly of the APMC. Their projections are based on the belief that the Act will be modified before the November-December season when strawberries hit the market, so they can choose a channel through which to address a larger market. In essence, they are saying, let a thousand flowers bloom.
