ICFA hosted consultation meeting with its potential partners on FarmerPlus project in New Delhi. The project is scheduled to be launched in three districts of Karnal in Haryana, Agra and Lakhimpur in UP in Dec 2019 with 20 industry and institutional partners. The project aims to provide powerful support system to initially 1000 member farmers of ICFA District Agriculture Councils. Prof. A Ginige and Paul Collin from the Western Sydney University, Australia made detailed presentation of their features loaded App, AgriSavvy, which has shown very good results in four States in India. Representatives from Ernst & Young, SourceTrace, Cargill, CropLife India, Sonalika Tractors and others participated.
National Consultation Meet on Zero Budget Natural Farming held at India International Centre in New Delhi. Important representatives from the industry, scientific bodies and farming community joined the discussions to work out common framework for ZBNF. Farmers from states like Telangana, Maharashtra, Himachal, Haryana and UP claimed that their profits have gone up but almost all the eminent scientists and industry CEOs expressed their doubts that there can be farming with zero budget. A decision is taken that ICFA will create a National Platform for Farmers Innovations and coordinate with research institutions and policy makers for validation of results and processes and recommendations.
ICFA presented its first edition of Farm Power Awards 2019 in partnership with Apollo Tyres. The awards were presented to 18 farm machinery and tractor companies and two distinguished persons for their lifetime achievements; Mr. TR Kesavan, President, Tractor Manufacturers Association and Dr. Gajendra Singh, former Dy. DG, ICAR and President, Society of Agri Engineers. The companies presented the Award included TAFE, Sonalika, Mahindra, John Deere, Escorts, New Holland, Standard, Captain, Greaves, Force Motors and others. The 11 member Award Jury was chaired by Dr. Panjab Singh, President, National Academy of Agriculture Sciences. Dr. Ashok Dalwai, Chairman, PM Task Force on Doubling Farmers Income was the chief guest on this occasion
4th Global Agriculture Awards were presented by Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, Director General, ICAR in New Delhi to 18 distinguished individuals, institutions and States for their outstanding contributions to advancing the cause of agriculture. Dr. PK Joshi, Dr. C Kole, Yudhvir Singh, Sudhakar Tomar, Dr Ken Mishra, Dr Douglas Wagner among the individuals, NABI, LPU, NCDEX among institutions, Bayer CropScience, Coromandel, IndoGulf, Walmart, Sahyadri Farms among Corporates and the Governments of HARYANA, Himachal and Tamil Nadu among the States were the prominent awardees of ICFA Global Awards 2019. Earlier in the morning Global Agri Summit was inaugurated by the Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Mr. UP Singh, who was joined by Dr. Ashok Dalwai, Chairman, Task Force on DFI, Dr Purvi Mehta, Asia Head of Agri, Gates Foundation and Dr. Douglas Wagner, President, AlgaeEnergy, Spain
Doubling Agri Exports holds the key to improving production efficiency, value chain development and increasing farm incomes. ICFA launched its 30 Member Agri Export Council to bring all key stakeholders on one platform to synergies the efforts to achieving doubling agro exports to $60 billion and more by 2022. The launch was done by the Hon’ble Vice Chair, NITI Aayog, Dr. Rajiv Kumar at the inaugural of the National Conference on Doubling Agri Exports. He was joined by the Agriculture Commissioner, Govt of India, Dr. SK Malhotra, Chairman, APEDA, Sh. Paban Borthakur, IAS and others. ICFA plans to add 20 more companies and institutions on Board and later add FPOs and farmers to connect them with export markets.
UPL has grown from strength to strength to be counted among the top global leaders in agriculture business. Dr. MJ Khan Chairman, ICFA at the World Biostimulants Congress at Barcelona visited well decorated UPL stall and met team members from around the world. What an amazing team @ UPL.
Dr. MJ Khan Chairman, ICFA at the World Biostimulants Congress at Barcelona visited AlgaeEnergy stall and met the India team present, headed by Debabrata Sarkar. Thanks AlgaeEnergy for all the courtesy.
ICFA State Council meeting took place in Lucknow chaired by Sh. Alok Ranjan, former Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh and co-chaired by Mr. TR Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Committee on Agriculture and President, Tractor Manufacturers Association. Over 55 representatives from the State Government, ICAR system, farmers bodies, development institutions and important companies, including ITC, UPL, DSCL, Bayer, DAL, TAFE, Tata Trusts etc. joined the deliberations and finalised the Strategic Action Plan for the State. State President of BKU presented the farmers agenda. Four more districts, Muzaffarnagar, Allahabad, Jalaun and Agra were finalised for launching District Agriculture Councils and pilot testing of ICFA FarmerPlus project. Organising Workshop of State Legislators on Agri Issues is the new addition to the ICFA State Work Plan.
ICFA and ICAR signed a comprehensive MoU, covering the areas of knowledge management, research and studies, agri Startups and entrepreneurship development, jointly funded research projects, industry partnerships, export technical support, technology commercialisation and farmers engagement programs among others. The MoU will be executed by jointly finalising five years work plan for India and overseas markets, mainly focused on Asian and African countries, under South-South and other cooperation agreements. The MoU was signed by the Secretary, DARE & DG-ICAR, Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra and DG, ICFA, Sh. Pravin Srivastva (IAS 1980 Batch) and extends to all divisions and institutes under ICAR. Present on the occasion were ICFA chairman, Dr. MJ Khan, Secretary & FA, ICAR, Dr. Tripathi, CEO-ICFA, Mr. Vikas Bhatia and seven Deputy DGs of ICAR; Dr. AK Singh, Dr. RC Agarwal, Dr. TR Sharma, Dr. AK Singh, Dr. J Jena, Dr. BD Tripathi and Dr. SK Chaudhary.
As the sustainability and food safety concerns become central to public policy the world over, there is massive focus on bio-agriculture, resulting into rapid pace growth of bio-inputs market. But in our country due to absence of national policy and regulations the market is flooded by spurious products. However, with the entry of large corporate, of late, the market is slowly maturing. There is need for more investment, greater focus on R&D, effective regulation and public private partnerships for technology development for the market to grow from current $2 billion to $7 billion by 2030. Today there are very few companies working on this concept. Prathista Industries, Hyderabad is one, which is doing pioneering work with the state of the art R&D facilities, built with funds by DST and the technology support by ICAR and CSIR. The company has developed over 90 glucose based plant nutrition and plant protection products. Dr MJ Khan Chairman, ICFA visited their R&D and production facilities, 100 kms from Hyderabad and held detailed discussions with the CMD, Dr. Sairam and his team on all aspects from policy to technology and trade to investment for promotion of bio agriculture in the country. The company is launching its full range of products, including nano-fertlisers at the AgroVision 2021, Dec 16-18, Lucknow.
