Conference on “Government, Industry and Farmer can work together to make Farming More Profitable in Maharashtra and in India”

23rd January 2019, Mumbai
Cooperation between Regulatory Authority and Industry in Doubling Farmers Income

The Dignitaries present here, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good Afternoon.
I indeed have great pleasure to participate in this Conference organised by CCFI on “Government, Industry and Farmer working together to make farming more profitable in Maharashtra and India.” I believe it is a very important area where Regulatory Authority and Industry need to put greater efforts.

For Doubling Farmers Income, I believe we have to first concentrate on affordable pricing of various agri inputs used by Farmers. Due to improvement in technology and availability of quality seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and other growth regulators, plant protection measures are at their best. Due to overproduction and lower demands, sometimes yield cost goes down to even 20% to 30%. This results in distress selling and prices of commodities are non-remunerative to Farmers. The Government needs to take maximum care of input costing and also bring fair MSP, which at present is not supporting enough.

As an example, I would like to bring to your notice a brief abstract from a recent news item that appeared in Times of India on Saturday, 19th January:

Rahul Pawar, a young and educated farmer running a nursery at Khutbav Village on the Pune Solapur highway, had been doing brisk business selling saplings to farmers for years. He had about 40 women working at the nursery throughout the year. Now, he employs 15-20 people intermittently as business is down with vegetable growers, caught between low prices of produce and rising input costs, struggling to keep going. Such was the demand for vegetable crop saplings that he had to take saplings from other nurseries to fulfill his orders. But now his annual turnover has declined by about 20% ...
The article goes on to say that the mood in the region is gloomy as farmers have not gotten good prices for three years. Prices of Tomato, Onion, Potato are very poor. Despite the jump in productivity, lower prices and higher input costs have hurt farmers.

I have highlighted only a few lines from the article. We need to take steps to address such situations effectively through appropriate measures.

Post-harvest infrastructure is very poor, and when there are bumper crops, farmers are forced to sell produce at throw-away prices.

Increasing and upgrading storage facilities to preserve produce for longer durations can bring changes in remunerative prices. For this to happen, encouraging policies should be introduced for developing infrastructure in states for cold storage systems.

Also, taxation on key inputs like Agrochemicals needs to be brought down from the present 18% to a minimum level of 5%, which would reduce input costs to farmers.

Cooperation between Regulatory Authority and Industry

The main point of discussion for us today is cooperation between the Regulatory Authority and Industry, which can help in doubling farmers’ income.

As far as Crop Protection Products are concerned, to achieve this, devising policies that support farmers to ensure the supply of advanced and effective crop protection technologies at the most reasonable price, maintaining minimum agri-input costs for farming is key. These technologies should be accessible not only to large-scale farmers but also to small landholding farmers, who are very key to increasing agricultural productivity and the success of Indian Agriculture.

The reason I am inviting particular attention to small landholding farmers is that nowadays we find two scenarios:

1. It is mainly a section of small farmers who are losing their crops due to pests and diseases, as the majority of this section is not using plant growth and crop protection technologies because they are often unaffordable.
2. In another scenario, it is also a fact that the use of fertilizers and pesticides has increased agricultural productivity, but at the same time, the cost of cultivation has increased for farmers due to higher input costs. As pointed out earlier, low prices of agri-produce like vegetables, particularly in seasons when productivity is higher, make input costs a greater concern for farmers, leading them to protest against the Government over lower MSP.

As far as the Crop Protection Industry is concerned, the Regulatory Authority and Industry need to work together to bring improvements and changes in the following areas to support Indian farmers in getting quality crop protection inputs at the most competitive costs:

• First priority should be finding ways to produce agri inputs like pesticides and fertilizers at minimum production costs.
• Marginalizing Imports by developing infrastructure to manufacture advanced crop protection technologies indigenously is key, as this could bring down costs to farmers, ultimately increasing their agricultural income.
• The Government should take steps to stop increasing imports of readymade pesticide formulations (finished products) without registering technical grade products in India. The policy that grants these registrations only helps create monopolies, resulting in high prices for such pesticides. Compulsory registration of technicals along with formulations is key, as is prevalent in all major agricultural nations worldwide.
• The Indian agrochemical manufacturing sector largely depends on imports for some key intermediates and raw materials to manufacture active ingredients (technical grade products) required for formulations. Large quantities of technical grade products are also imported for manufacturing formulations. This needs to be changed.
• Regulatory Authorities/Government and Industry need to work together to devise policies and feasible projects to help indigenous production. The Government can support large-scale industries in developing R&D facilities and infrastructure for the production of key technologies locally. Also, Government-controlled research institutions can develop technologies and offer them for commercialization to Indian industries, particularly MSMEs. Such arrangements can bring competition to the domestic market, leading to the availability of crop protection products for farmers at the most economical cost.
• The Government should not fall prey to demands by NGOs and Environmentalists to ban generic pesticides, which are available to farmers at very affordable prices and have not shown any adverse impacts on soil or the environment.

Agrochemicals worth US$4.1 billion are going off-patent by 2020. A large number of technical products will be getting off-patent, providing an opportunity for Indian companies. India should be ready to take advantage by devising policies and developing indigenous technologies to manufacture these products at competitive prices for the benefit of Indian farmers.

In fact, pesticides are for plants like medicines are for the human body. In the right dosage, they improve the health of plants and provide better yields. At the same time, we need to guard against the use of sub-standard and counterfeit products, which pose a threat where crop failures happen, creating economic losses for farmers. To check this:

• Although rules and regulations are in place, we need to devise effective methods to stop the registration, manufacturing, and marketing of sub-standard and spurious products, and strictly control the activities of fly-by-night operators. They pose a big threat to farmers and are often the cause of crop failures, leading to huge financial burdens on farmers.
• Effective methods should be devised to check and weed out non-serious product registrants of agrochemicals. Directives should be given to state authorities to stop the operations of fly-by-night operators.

Responsible Use of Pesticides and Extension Activities

Education and training of farmers and dealers in the proper usage of pesticides at the right times, following waiting periods, and using protective gear during pesticide application are other areas where the Government and Industry need to concentrate more. In cases of accidental poisoning, the industry and government are often targeted. We have many examples, particularly in Maharashtra.

Since we have limited time today, and my allotted time is 10 minutes, my suggestion is that we should prioritize issues and work towards achieving the desired objective of supporting farmers in increasing their farming income.

Concluding my words here, Thank you.

Pradip Dave
Chairman, AIMCO Pesticides Ltd. &
President, PMFAI