The Agri Crisis-Why?

The 'Real' Agrarian crisis

When one mentions 'agri crisis'  most people  associate it with farmer suicides, monsoon failures, poor yield , GM food etc.,Contrary to popular opinion, the real crisis in Indian agriculture is not because of poor farming practices, but more because of lack of organized marketing , supply chain & distribution .

An efficient supply chain is crucial for success of any modern industry . Though the Green revolution's focus was to increase the yield , as any economist would say, increasing supply without proper knowledge of  'demand' , would never yield expected results.

Thus , India is caught in situation where we are world leaders in 'production' but still having to 'import' even essential commodities. Our cost of production is very low, but our cost of local distribution is 3 times higher than world average making international products cheaper than home grown items !

The veggie trail

The following video clip  (shot on locations surrounding Theni, Maduraiand Chennai )show the typical long and archaic route farm produce s take in their journey from farm to home.

As you can see from the video , the key gaps are :

- The produce changes too many hands , but very little value addition

- Crude weighing and quality control , leading to huge variation in grades and weights

- Mostly cash transations with no IT usage to record  , hence no paper trail of volume or money involved

- Huge wastge in transit and poor handling

Why is there an agri crisis ?

The following presentation addresses further questions related to :

- Why modern retailers have not been able to create an impact ?

- Why government's various farmer centric initiatives and subsidies have failed to produce result ?

- Why data is crucial for any industry ?

it also outlines simple solutions , which form the basis of the efarm model . Next ...(The eFarm solution)