|
 Being
an agrarian economy, the agriculture sector is extremely important
for India. ISAP, a network of agriculture professionals, plans
to bring together agriculturists from across India and help
them with vital resources in order to take this sector to
new highs. Frederick Noronha has the details
Sometimes, what’s badly needed is just the chance to
link up, talk and share notes. One initiative to bring together
agricultural professionals from across India is already beginning
to show results. In this endeavour, it’s IT that is building
bridges.
Called ISAP (Indian Society of Agricultural Professionals),
this network has a carefully-charted map of what it plans
to do and how it will achieve this. If its ambitious plans
work out, it could squeeze out a rich harvest by garnering
the potential of IT to benefit the field.
This e-network (also with brick-and-mortar plans) aims to
reach out to at least 100,000 agribusiness professionals,
whom it anticipates to involve as associates within five years.
The firm has been set up as a Section 25 not-for-profit
company, under a provision that allows companies to be set
up under Indian law without a profit-making motive.
“The idea is to make it viable and sustainable in five
years time,” says ISAP executive director Sunil Khairnar,
a B Tech in agriculture and post-graduate studies at the prestigious
Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. So far, using
the humble e-mail and electronic mailing-lists, ISAP has already
been able to start the flow of vital information exchange.
You can join the ISAPindia mailing list by sending a blank
email to isapindia-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Varied types of information are put out on this list. Some
examples are: Shripad Kanekar in Banda (coastal Maharashtra)
is part of a group of farmers wanting to sell up to 20 metric
tons of seedless dried Garcinia Indica from the Konkan belt.
He’s seeking advice for market linkages.
N N Bhuiya of Assam Plants and Machineries at Guwahati needs
to buy cashew-nut grafting (planting material) for distribution
in his home state on a large scale. Someone in coastal Goa
has a tip off for Bhuiya on this matter. Farmer-journalist
and founder of recently launched water forum ‘Jalakoota’,
Shree Padre, recently came out with his sixth book on rainwater
harvesting. Says Padre: “The book titled Rain Water Harvesting
has been released at a time when people are struggling hard
for water.” Padre has also authored five books on the
topic in the Kannada language. “Rain is free, catch it
freely,” is his punch-line.
Ashish Kotamkar in Pune draws attention to a website meant
to help Indian farmers bargain better (agmarknet.nic.in).
Meanwhile, news coming in points out that Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS), India’s largest computer software exporter,
has announced a pact with a Netherlands-based firm to develop
Web applications for the flower and plant industry.
If you’re on the list, you might also be lucky to learn
about an Indian biotech mission to the US and Canada next
week to promote co-operation among the companies in the field.
Meanwhile, a Karnataka-based organisation, the Krishi Prayog
Parivar, is working in the field of organic, self-reliant
agriculture. Due to their efforts, many farmers have switched
over to non-chemical, low-input farming. Associated farmers
now have a stock of organically-grown paddy, says Anand from
Shimoga.
Non-profit, non-political
ISAP calls itself a “non-profit, non-political,
non-government and public-interest organisation dedicated
to participants in the agriculture sector”.
Its goal is to “enhance rural incomes” in India.
This it hopes to do by boosting access to ‘appropriate
agricultural technologies and market intelligence’ to
the millions living in the Indian hinterland.
One of its goals is to create a national and even international
network of food and agribusiness professionals involved “in
all business aspects of the agricultural sector.” It
also hopes to build and boost ‘agribusiness clinics’
to reach out with the products and services needed by Indian
farmers.
Indian agriculture, points out its promoters, contributes
some 25 percent of the country’s economy and 65 percent
of entire employment. “Therefore, an increase in farm
incomes, however modest, will lead to betterment in the lives
of 650 million people,” they argue.
ISAP has a number of long-term goals. This includes creating
a forum of experts who would provide technical and market
information services to farmers and others, identifying highly
motivated agricultural graduates and offer training to run
agribusiness clinics, and enable professionals with information
to add value to their enterprises.
Besides, it wants to hunt for relevant information on technology
and markets, and make sure this reaches out to farmers through
agribusiness clinics. It also aims to build new linkages for
marketing of agri products by helping the dis-intermediation
of trade channels to benefit farmers.
Online, offline channels
One more goal is to develop online (Internet-based) and
offline info-dissemination channels. “We aim to conduct
studies and research projects on post-harvest technologies
and marketing of agricultural products,” says Khairnar.
This way, ISAP hopes to meet a number of goals. First, a
national (and international) network of food and agri-businesses
professionals would be created. This would lead to a few model
agribusiness clinics being set up.
This would also possibly lead to a system that identifies
highly motivated agricultural graduates and offer them training
and project services to help create, in turn, a larger number
of sustainable agribusiness clinics.
But is this a scalable project, or just one more of those
many show-pieces that works on a micro-level but can’t
make a difference to the lives of many?
For India’s size, argues Khairnar, we need something
like 50,000 agribusiness clinics. This project aims at building
the mechanism that would create agri-clinics on a self-sustainable
basis. ISAP says its own focus will be to set up the knowledge
network, identify interested agri-graduates, and train them,
besides providing the information production and services
to keep their agri-clinics working suitably. “Thus the
concept of agribusiness clinics becomes scalable and could
expand till it reaches every major village in the country,”
argues ISAP.
This concept is based on the idea of creating a knowledge
network. Together with its knowledge delivery mechanism, it
could if effectively worked out reach out to a large number
of agri-experts, and rural entrepreneurs who will run the
agri-clinics, besides farmers.
To recover costs, farmers using the agribusiness clinics
would be charged modest fees for using the information and
expert services, in an aim to also make it commercially viable.
Services planned
Services planned include a city-wise or centre-wise network
of functional experts. These would be classified according
to their domain of specialisation horticulture, vermiculture,
pathology, entomology and the like. “We estimate the
population of experts to be of the order of 5,000 and we target
to have at least 25 percent on our panel within two years,”
says ISAP.
Some 100,000 agribusiness professionals will be enrolled
as associates in five years time. These could be unemployed
graduates, progressive farmers, manufacturers, service providers,
buyers and customers of agri products or services, and the
like.
Once this it done, it would help to launch and run agribusiness
clinics. This would need training, course-content, know-how
and managerial inputs. Initial finance for the launch would
also be needed.
Currently, ISAP is seeking to build up associates in a number
of categories. These include agri-experts (‘pracharak’),
disseminator of agri-knowledge (‘prasarak’), agri-knowledge
volunteer (‘krishi-sevak’), as partner non-governmental
organisations (‘prepak’), as farmers intending to
use agri-knowledge (‘krishak’), partner research
organisations (‘sanshodhak’) or even as agri journalists
writing extensively on agricultural issues (‘lekhak’).
Frederick Noronha can be contacted at fred@bytesforall.org
|
