Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers, Government of India in collaboration with Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry organized a conference on ‘Scope of Public Private Partnership in Agriculture’ in New Delhi today. Shri, Manoj Ahuja, Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare, Govt. of India delivered a keynote address on the government’s expectations from the industry with a focus on incorporating private sector expectations into the formulation of an architectural framework for sector development, shared understanding, knowledge and resources for overall development.
In her speech, Smt N. Vijayalakshmi, JS (Marketing) emphasized on strengthening the four I’s namely inputs, infrastructure, investment and institutions to develop a conducive ecosystem for PPP projects in agriculture.Shri Samuel Praveen Kumar, Joint Secretary (Extension, AIF and I&PS), Department of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare spoke about de-risking agriculture and emphasized the need to develop scalable, viable and replicable business models while leveraging the strengths of the public and private sectors sectors have a win-win situation.
Shri Pravesh Sharma, Chairman, FICCI Task Force on FPOs, in his speech highlighted the need to develop synergy between government and private players for a targeted approach to investment in technology, capital and market linkages. Several industry experts highlighted various gaps as major areas of concern such as “knowledge gaps for farmers, lack of basic infrastructure, quality of inputs etc. Some of them also highlighted the issue of ministries/departments and stakeholders working in silos.
The session on States’ Perspective on PPP in Agriculture was chaired by Shri Samuel Praveen Kumar and moderated by Shri Hemendra Mathur, Chairman, FICCI Task Force on Start-ups. States pointed out issues like the need for farm gate infrastructure for grading, grading and primary processing of produce to reduce post-harvest losses, logistics services to synchronize with producers, infrastructure to meet export requirements, open network for data collection directly to farmers & knowledge distribution. The consultation was attended by more than 100 participants from various stakeholders including state government representatives, Agritech start-ups, private sector players, FPO members, agri industry experts and investors.
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