 | Production in agriculture as well as consumption of agri-produce
involves huge numbers. Even the trade channel players also add
up to very-very large numbers. Manually and through paper records,
it has almost been a nightmare for managers of agri-businesses
to manage this data. |
| For bulk of the food products, for very long, production and consumption remained local affairs. Only few products, either mass produced or specialty products were only distributed and consumed across long distances. But today with the opening of global economy the distance between production and consumption areas is shrinking. This requires very-very efficient management of Agri-business Value Chain. |
| Most of the development in agriculture has always been in government domain which has always been slow to adopt new technologies. With the results, the IT development for agriculture has not been as fast as it has been for many others sectors.
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| Most of the efforts for development of agriculture has been mainly directed towards increase in production through the use of inputs. This attitude relegated other options to the background but today no more significant results are being delivered through this approach.
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| Most of the regulatory framework has been evolved to either protect the producers or the consumers. This restricted the entry of large private sector players in agri trade and thus modern management practices have not been brought in managing Agri-businesses.
|
| Due to lack of interest and investments by private sector,
agriculture as agri-businesses has not evolved. Farmers on their
own have never been adventurous enough to become entrepreneurs. |
| Government agencies and NGOs have mostly taken up programs
covering either one or few components of agri-value chain. In
these programs also, most of the emphasis has been on increasing
the production only. Today this do not necessarily result in
better income for the producers. |
| Integrated development initiatives covering entire value chain
for agri produce has not been possible/taken up in the past
by any Agri-business Enterprise. |
| Development initiatives beginning at micro levels have not
grown into large initiatives at macro levels, due to many policy
and management constraints. |
| Scaling up of small scale successful models has not been possible,
mainly because most of them were not based on sound processes
& systems. |
| Trade channel players dealing with any one or few components
of value chain have neither been able to develop backward nor
forward integration to convert them into large integrated operations. |
| Lack of confidence and trust has always come in the way of
public-private partnerships for meaningful agri-business development
initiatives.
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