Agri-biz incubation key to improve farm incomes

Seeing agri-business enterprises as a way out of subsistence farming, InfoDev, a programme of the World Bank, and Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics) have come together to create a framework agri-business incubation (support) system, and agreed on the Agribusiness Community of Practice with four elements here.

These elements are access to finance, introduction to new markets, awareness of policy issues and capacity building, according to the Hyderabad Declaration issued after the three-day workshop in which 50 representatives from 15 countries participated. It would be implemented after specific details are worked out at an upcoming global agribusiness incubation conference in February.

William D Dar, director general, Icrisat, told reporters that the agri-business incubation partnerships were meant to help small farmers who are in subsistence farming to move to the next level of transition farming, and later to commercial or market-oriented farming. Currently, close to 60 per cent of Indian farmers were in subsistence and 20-25 per cent in transition while the rest are market-oriented.

“These interventions are key in facilitating the transition,” he said, pointing out that growth in agriculture was four times more effective in reducing poverty compared with the other sectors. In India, investment in agriculture was skewed in favour of irrigated farming to the disadvantage of rain-fed farming, Dar said.