Agriculture Summit 2006: Reforms for Empowering the Farmer
October 18-19, 2006, Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi

Welcome Address by Mr Y K Modi Past President FICCI

Honorable Minister Shri Kamal Nath Ji,
Honorable Minister Shri Subodh Kant Sahai Ji,
Smt. Radha Singh,
Shri Alok Sinha,
Shri Anil K Agarwal,
Distinguished speakers and delegates

It is always a pleasure to welcome the Hon'ble Commerce Minister, Shri Kamal Nath. He has been a pillar of support in all our endeavors and I thank him for taking time of his busy schedule to address this important conference. I am doubly pleased that another proactive minister, Shri Subodh Kant Sahay is here with us and I am delighted to welcome him to this conference.

Friends both these ministers are playing a key role in promoting and protecting the interests of our farmers. We are proud of the manner in which Mr Kamal Nath has defended the cause of our farmers in the WTO where he walked out of the Doha round of talks because the advanced countries refused to move forward on reducing the subsidies they give to their farmers.

Indeed, this is the key disadvantage that our farmers suffer in global markets. As a speaker said in this conference yesterday that if the advanced countries removed all their subsidies, the prices of subsidized farm crops would go up by 15 per cent or more. This would truly open up the global markets for our farmers and create new opportunities for them in number of crops. This is the cause that Mr Kamal Nath is fighting for and I would urge all of you to join me in applauding him for the marvelous job that he has done.

Today our farmers cannot afford to ignore the global market. There is a huge global opportunity that awaits us provided we are willing to change the way we look at farming. Our farmers will have to look outside the price support system that creates supply driven cultivation and switch to crops that deliver better returns in the global market. But the farmer is unlikely to get all this knowledge of what sells in the global market all by himself. And for this he needs to partner with the corporate sector and public sector agencies that can tell him what varieties to grow, how to grow them and then preserve them or process them so that it is delivered in a the form that the global consumer wants.

This is precisely the reason why FICCI organizes this conference to create partnerships between the farmer, the organized private sector and the public sector including research agencies such as ICAR and farm universities that can deliver global competitiveness to our farm sector and in the process raise productivity and incomes of our farmers. But we need reforms to make these partnerships work and remove all kinds of roadblocks that hinder them whether it is the APMC act or lack of a cold chain or warehousing systems or processing facilities that add value to crops to create what consumers want.

And I am pleased to report to you Sir that seen in this context the Agriculture summit 2006 has been a great success in taking forward the process that we began last year. The Summit has deliberated on a wide range of issues that will create these partnerships. Over 100 farmers from different parts of the country have joined here to raise their concerns and they have also listened to views of the corporate sector. This is the uniqueness of this conference that we have successfully created in partnership with Ms Radha Singh's team in the agriculture ministry. I will not go over the issues raised in the conference as the Hon'ble Secretary will give you a full flavour of the discourse that has taken place here over the last two days.

I will take advantage of the presence of our two ministers to raise some concerns about the export competitiveness the entire agri value chain as value addition would be the key to capture global markets.

• We need a stable exim policy on farm products. Sometimes we allow exports and sometimes we ban them. This ad hocism drives away buyers as India cannot be trusted as a reliable supplier. We also need stability in our approach to imports and here allow greater play for market forces subject to adequate tariff protection for our farmers.
  
• We must create adequate infrastructure to support farm trade, that is both imports and exports. This would include the cold chain at ports and airports, apart from increased handling capacity at ports. I would urge both our ministers to support our demand of 100 per depreciation benefit on cold chain investments by the private sector to accelerate investments in this area.
• We should accelerate the creation of crop and agro-climatic zone-specific export zones and processing zones

Friends I must complement The Minister of Food processing Mr Sahay for the proactive manner in which he is promoting the cause of value addition through processing. But we need his support for uniformity of VAT rules on food processing industries. We also need his support in faster implementation of the integrated modern food processing law that is in parliament.

We also need the support of both our ministers present today to promote FDI in food retailing as we need global knowledge of how to create efficient supply chains that link the farmer to the consumer both at home and abroad. Large foreign players in food retailing would enable our farmers to reap higher returns for their produce through higher exports.

India has the potential to become the world's food basket. We have all the agro-climatic zones and can grow virtually every crop. All we need is the right knowledge, a facilitatory framework for taking these crops to the market and the creation of the infrastructure that supports quick and efficient movement of this produce. As we stand on the threshold of change, there is a lot more that is to be done.

We, at FICCI would submit the proceedings of this summit along with sector specific recommendations to the concerned ministries and departments for consideration. We are confident that like last year we shall many of these recommendations implemented under the able stewardship of the agriculture ministry. I thank Mr Kamal Nath and Shri Sahay for supporting our endeavor.

Thank you.