Need to fix agri infrastructure, improve post-harvest linkages

Punjab needs to address yawning gaps in infrastructure supporting the agricultural sector. Improving post-harvest and marketing infrastructure is critical to unlock the potential of various segments in the agri-business supply chain.

While India is set to harvest a record food grain production of 260 million tonnes due to good monsoons and achieve five per cent growth, it is ironic that 17 per cent of the people are still under-nourished while 40 per cent of agriculture produce is wasted for want of storage facilities.

On the other hand, Parliament in September last year passed the National Food Security Act (NFSA) which is the world’s largest social welfare scheme. It guarantees access to subsidised food to 70 per cent of the 1.2 billion population.

The central government is now legally bound to provide each of 800 million people – nearly the combined populations of the United States and the European Union – with five kg of subsidised food grains every month.

I believe the landmark initiative should be led by strong domestic production. Besides being dependent on vagaries of the monsoon, agriculture in our country faces serious issues of food security and wastage in the supply chain.

There have been some encouraging developments in the recent past like public private partnerships in contract farming, drip irrigation projects and terminal markets. These can be extended to other areas like logistics, cold storage and warehousing. This is crucial for agriculture development in India.

Conducive government policies are required to attract private equity capital also. At the same time, successful large-scale replication of innovative models in agri-infrastructure will lead to evolution of organised, high-tech, demand-led and high-value orientation. These innovations could have significant advantages  if identified, localised and scaled up as part of rural developmentprogrammes.   

The agriculture sector accounts for 14 per cent of the country's total GDP. Some two-third of India’s people depend on rural employment for a living.

High levels of wastage, low productivity levels, falling private and public investments, scarcity of land, water and labour are some issues that have led to supply constraints. The mismatch between demand and supply has been further exacerbated by the rapid increase in food consumption on account of demographic changes.

The public private partnership route presents an excellent opportunity that has already had some success in states like Punjab and will need to be implemented systematically across the country. However, the long-term solution to correcting these supply deficiencies lies in drastic improvement in farm level productivity.

This can be achieved through investments in research and development in agri-sciences and subsequent information systems required to transfer this knowledge and monitor progress with farmers.

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