The government will promote investment in post-harvest activities including aggregation, modern storage, efficient supply chains, primary and secondary processing and marketing and branding, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.
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While details of the proposals are awaited, the finance minister’s commentary around promoting private and public investment in post-harvest activities appears very promising, said Shashank Kumar, founder and chief executive of agriculture services provider DeHaat. “In activities such as modern storage, it may help to be crop-specific, because then it will also open up more investment opportunities in warehousing solutions when linked to specific commodities,” he added.
“So far, market linkage solutions have dominated most of the venture capital investments. But bettering policies around storage solutions in the post-harvest side of the chain will help bring in more investments into controlling supply,” said Abhilash Sethi, investment director, Omnivore. “We are also seeing private companies increasingly focus on creating in-house processing capabilities as they see the scaling opportunities behind exporting.”
The finance minister said a comprehensive programme for supporting dairy farmers will be formulated. She also added that the government’s decision to set up a separate department for fisheries has resulted in doubling of both inland and aquaculture production.
“The special focus on dairies and fisheries is good news, for diversification of farming income, there is so much scope to improve farmers’ access to credit, markets and infrastructure in these sub-sectors,” said Hemendra Mathur, venture partner at Bharat Innovation Fund and a cofounder of ThinkAg.
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As a part of her interim budget speech, the finance minister also stressed upon expanding the application of Nano DAP in all agro-climatic zones.“It will reduce chemical usage and will improve long-term soil health,” said Siddharth Dialani, cofounder and CEO of BharatAgri. “Infrastructure development in the post-harvest industry will lead to more wealth and livelihood development among the farming community, transforming Indian agriculture,” he added.
Shailendra Tiwari, founder of agritech startup Fasal, said a scaled implementation of Nano DAP will be game-changing to the sector. Lessening the quantity of fertiliser, while ensuring the efficacy of it, will also have an impact on fertiliser subsidies, said Tiwari.
