WWRR Vol.2.015

Agri-inputs / Automobiles
India
BASKAR S REDDY: THE RURAL LAST MILE
Country Director,
Syngenta Foundation
Key takeaways
Lack of innovation in policies. Several policies initiated by the government in recent
years are well-intended for development of the agriculture sector in India. However, these
policies lack innovation in the through-process. Hence, the framework as well as
implementation of these policies continues to grapple with the same old problems such
as market distortions, isolation, protracted timelines, short-term mindset and lack of focus.
Short-term interventions lead to crisis. Lack of availability of real-time data, consumerfirst
policy approach and short-term interventions by the government to manage prices,
particularly when they shot up, have led to crisis in food production. Lower market prices
are allowed to sustain for food crops, while sharply higher prices are moderated through
ad-hoc interventions pulling down the average realizations for farmers.
Agri entrepreneurship program. Syngenta Foundation, in partnership with Tata Trusts,
has initiated the Agri Entrepreneurship (AE) program to deploy village-level service
providers, who can cater to several requirements of the farming community, including
(1) crop advisory, (2) access to quality agri-inputs and machinery, (3) access to markets
and (4) access to credit and insurance. The Agri Entrepreneurs go through a lifecycle of
rigorous selection and training process, followed by launch, regular mentoring, direct
engagement with the farmers and impact assessment eventually. Each AE can cater to
about 200 farmers, who together may create a micro-economy of around Rs15-20 mn,
adequate for the AE to earn around Rs0.2 mn annually.
Target: 20 mn farmers by 2023. The program has 750 AEs currently who are catering
to over 100,000 farmers in about 2,000 villages across six states. Syngenta and Tata
Trusts have set a steep target of deploying 100,000 AEs to engage directly with 20 mn
farmers by 2023.
Opportunity to leverage data-profiling of farmers. The program allows the
foundation to establish detailed data-profiling of the farmers, termed as ‘farming
quotient’, which can potentially be used for real-time data analytics to channelize
adequate inputs, resources and relevant advisory for the farmers to bring about a
systematic change in the domestic agriculture sector.
KOTAK INSTITUTIONAL EQUITIES RESEARCH 5