Industry bodies seek change in agri-biz development policy

An industry body in Karnataka while welcoming the Karnataka Agri-Business Development Policy 2010, has said that the policy requires further refinements.

N S Srinivasa Murthy, President, FKCCI, said when the policy talks of “Assist Land Acquisition”, it doesn’t say whether it includes cultivable land also. “If it does, then it is going against the spirit of this policy. FKCCI feels that only non-cultivable banjar land (non-cultivable waste land) should only be acquired for setting up food processing units,” he said.

The policy further says: “Support the investors providing water, electricity and road infrastructure.” But it doesn’t say that if a potential area lacks these facilities, who would invest in their development. It also talks of collecting facilitation charges from investors. “But if the idea is to strengthen the food processing sector, why this charge should be levied at all,” the industry body questioned.

“The policy talks of investment in food processing, value addition, cold storage, branding, packing, marketing network, without defining the chain and also without mentioning if it will be individual in each of these sub-sectors are one person investing in the chain. This needs a clarification for this policy being successful,” he added.

The policy talks of establishing terminal markets. Establishment of large terminal markets or mega-markets in private sector would help to bring in state of the art technology and processes to offer world-class markets to agricultural sector.

“This is almost in line with allowing FDI in multi-brand retailing, which FKCCI opposed. Instead of developing these mega markets, all-out efforts should be made to strengthen the existing APMC markets by providing all infrastructures including e-marketing infrastructure. This would help in stopping the dilution of the existing APMCs and all the purchases of farm produce should be made from the APMC yards only,” Murthy added. He further added that the present infrastructure and setup available in the APMCs can be put into good use to implement the idea of Agro Process Centers mentioned in Karnataka Agri-Business Development Policy 2010.

FKCCI added that it is also vital to maintain the existing condition that no private market yard should not be established within a 25 km radius. Murthy while welcoming the idea to support the farmers by assisting in their Agri-Business investments, felt that it should be provided to a cluster of farmers also.