Agri-business Industry in India: Emerging Issues

India has enormous natural and physical endowments, viz. land, labour, water, livestock, fisheries, forestry, human resources, climate, new and renewable sources of energy, among others. Unfortunately, so far inadequate attention has been paid to scientifically assess, plan, fund and implement programs to develop agri-business. This has led to erosion and misuse of country's scarce and costly resources. There is, therefore, immediate need to exploit these resources through application of science and technology accompanied by timely and hassle-free provision of institutional credit, insurance and marketing services. Besides, independent accredited professional institution should be entrusted to evaluate the impact of the agri-business. This can make country's agriculture free from vagaries of monsoon and droughts and competitive in international export markets.

Agri-business developed by private corporate houses and multinational organizations has been handicapped to exploit full potential of farm sector growth because of ever increasing number of small/marginal/tenant farmers, oral lessees, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers and continuing declining per capita farm land. Resultant effect has been striking undernourishment and mal-nourishment of children and pregnant women, hunger, unemployment and poverty in rural areas in particular. Lack of concern and commitment of institutions, rather than their weakness, has impacted adversely on (i) growth in public capital formation (ii) creation and productive use of land and water resources and (iii) farmers’ ability to access knowledge/technology, inputs of production including credit on time and at reasonable rates. Last but not the least, it has not been able to minimize wastages of vegetables, fruits and food-grains (because of neglect of storage, processing and value chain infrastructure) that can make farm commodities incessantly available in domestic markets nullifying food-inflation effect. This can, also, help farmers enhance their farm income through annual export of marketable surplus of farm commodities in international markets.