NEW DELHI: Agricultural scientists deliberated on Saturday under the aegis of the Indo-U.S. Knowledge Initiative on the ways and means to make contract farming viable in India. Several papers and studies conducted by Indian scientists were presented to highlight the bottlenecks in making contract farming feasible to cater to the corporate food chains and supermarkets that would suffuse the retail market in the next five years.

At the centre of the discussions were farmers although there were no farmers' representatives at the workshop conducted here jointly by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

Reforms in the marketing sector were high on the government's priority. The government was creating an enabling environment for investment in agribusiness and for strengthening backwards and forward linkages through various policy and regulatory means, said Union Agriculture and Food Minister Sharad Pawar while opening the two-day workshop. "Booming economy, rising incomes, growing urbanisation, changing consumer preferences and rising supermarkets are changing the food basket of Indian consumers towards high-value and processed food products."

The government would refine its contract farming strategies based on the recommendations of the workshop the Minister told the distinguished gathering comprising M.S. Swaminathan, Senior Economist USDA Maurice R. Landes, U.S. Drake University Law School's Neil Hamilton, Union Agriculture Secretary P.K. Mishra, ICAR Director-General Mangala Rai, agri-business representatives, farm, fish and poultry scientists.

India is one of the largest producers for high-valued food commodities such as milk, fruits, vegetables and poultry but value addition is low. To create an enabling atmosphere, the government amended the Agriculture Produce Market Committee Act to allow direct transaction between buyers and sellers outside regulated markets.

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