India Inc Extends Support To Agri Laws, Says New Reforms Will Improve Market Access, Increase Farmers' Income

Industry body CII believes the Agriculture Marketing reforms indeed herald a new era for agriculture and have taken care of many long-standing reform agendas.

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New Delhi: Even as farmers are protesting against the new farm laws, the leaders of India Inc. believes that the recent reforms are part of a more extensive set of coordinated and comprehensive initiatives that have been taken by the government, focused on the input side, introducing risk mitigation measures, reducing post-harvest losses, and augmenting market and income opportunities for farmers. Industry body CII believes the Agriculture Marketing reforms indeed herald a new era for agriculture and have taken care of many long-standing reform agendas. "Given the need of the hour, the progressive agri marketing reforms aimed towards 'Moving to One Nation, One Market' are a significant step that will enable better access to markets, catalyze the creation of primary processing infrastructure, improve access to technology and more importantly will help augment farmers' incomes," said Uday Kotak, CEO Kotak Mahindra Bank, and CII President. According to Tata Steel, managing director T V Narendran, the ongoing agitation leads to a disruption in the movement of goods and labour. "Our members see transit times to Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Delhi-NCR increase by up to 50%. This will also lead to increases in logistics costs. Many companies in the industrial belts surrounding Delhi face labour shortages as people struggle to reach production facilities from neighbouring towns. These disruptions can have an impact on the green shoots of recovery we were starting to see since COVID," said Narendran, President-Designate, CII. The reforms will create the right enabling environment for market and investment-led agricultural growth and increased income generation opportunities for farmers, feels India Inc. "The far-sighted reforms will have a transformational impact on the agri sector by enhancing productivity, modernizing infrastructure, enabling aggregation at scale, and improving market access. The policy announcements will also enable ITC to build further on its deep engagement with millions of farmers through its e-Choupal ecosystem to scale up farmer training, adopt digital and climate-smart technologies and public-private-people partnerships to support FPOs by enhancing productivity and additional market linkages. Progressively, the building of competitive agri value chains will also help boost exports of value-added products," said ITC chairman and managing director Sanjiv Puri, also chairman of CII National Council on Agriculture. According to India Inc., the reforms will also give great impetus to investment in extension services to the farmers to further improve productivity and returns. "Private sector initiatives are also focused on enhancing sustainability. Our Sustainable Sugarcane Production Program covering about 1.5 lac hectares of sugarcane area across four units in 2 districts of Uttar Pradesh focuses on productivity enhancement and water conservation through best practices like trash mulching and drip irrigation etc. The objective is to increase productivity and reduce the cost of cultivation, thus increasing farmers' incomes. The reforms will enable deeper and long-term engagement between the farmers and the value chain participants to make Indian agriculture more competitive on a sustainable basis," said Ajay S Shriram, Chairman, and Sr. Managing Director, DCM Shriram Ltd. Suresh Narayanan, Chairman & Managing Director, Nestle India Ltd, believes that the reform process will also boost the food processing sector with enhanced opportunities for strengthening and scaling micro food processing enterprises, an integral part of the agriculture sector. "With these partnerships being forged, we will see a reduction in wastage, increase in investment in extension services to improve productivity and returns as well as the creation of on-farm post-harvest infrastructure," said Narayanan, Chairman, CII National Committee on Food Processing. Reforms will also create opportunities for collaboration between farmers and buyers like food processors and retailers from pre-planting to the post-harvest stage creating an opportunity to further scaling these models. "With enhanced sourcing opportunities, primary processing opportunities will be created closer to the production clusters, thus helping to reengineer the entire supply chain into a more efficient and integrated system. This will also help in doubling the farmers' income in the shortest possible manner". Piruz Khambatta, Chairman and Managing Director, Rasna Pvt Ltd.