FICCI Food 360° Awards Curtain Raiser

International Conference-cum-Exhibition on Agribusiness & Food Processing

Hyderabad, November 5, 2012: The curtains are raised on the second edition of FICCI’s FOOD 360, which is scheduled from November 5-6, 2012 at Hyderabad.

The Two-day Conference is being inaugurated by Honorable Governor, Government of Andhra Pradesh: Shri E.S.L. Narasimhan garu. We are pleased to have his august presence. The honorable Governor would stress on the good performance of agriculture during the eleventh plan period and the significant diversification towards vegetables, dairy and poultry. While we acknowledge this, there is a need to focus on ensuring the interest of farmers in agriculture by a coordinated and holistic development of all areas of agriculture like indigenous technologies, new technologies, capital investments, improvement in rural infrastructure, market linkages and conducive policies. Another area of focus should be ensuring safe food for the consumers and increasing the level of processing and value addition. The need is to develop a sustainable model where there is focus on increasing quality and quantity of food production followed by adequate market linkages to ensure farm prosperity.

Speaking on the occasion HE Shri ESL Narsimhan, congratulated FICCI for this laudable exercise of organizing FOOD 360 annually. He said, this conference has great significance as a large section of the population is dependent on Agriculture. Food security is an important aspect of national security, as keeping the population contended is essential in maintaining national security. There is a fight for scarce resources, everything including land, water etc are diminishing while population is on the rise. It is a challenge posed to all present here and especially those who are speaking on technology in aid of agriculture. We have seen green revolution; white revolution etc., the need of the hour is seed revolution, which can enhance the yield in the era of shrinking land. The conference should address how to add value to the crop for the farmer in terms of storage, refrigeration, transportation. It will be bigger problem if farming becomes unviable, with the rural populace migrating to urban areas. This can reduce the agriculture output drastically, besides straining the already burdened infrastructure in the urban areas. The conference should also look at translating the research in the labs into farmer friendly aids to benefit the farmers. Otherwise the research and confabulations in conferences like this will be confined to the intellectuals. Suggestions from this conference should be taken to the farmers as a pilot project in some areas and see how they can be translated to benefit the farmer, he added.

Mr. I Y R Krishna Rao, Special Chief Secretary, Agri Marketing, Govt of AP, desired public private alliance in agriculture. He said contract farming should be encouraged, which can add value to the private investor, farmer and the consumer, it will be a win - win situation for all. However, he also opined that initiatives of private investors directly with the farmers without Government involvement have been a success off late and quoted the example of ITC Agro. He said poultry farming has been a roaring success with private investor – farmer alliance, without any involvement from the government. He said Government is looking at initiating Private markets, though the government has to forego the market fee it earns. Apparently the experience in Maharashtra with private markets has been a great success, he commented. He desired a Standing Committee comprising of Agriculture chief secretary, Industry bodies like FICCI, farmers representatives to be set up, which can meet once in a quarter and discuss and address policy initiatives related to agriculture.

It is acknowledged that the Indian agriculture, given its biodiversity and capability to generate enormous win-win models for developing competitive businesses on the one hand and raising farmers’ incomes on the other hand is one of the most promising sectors of the economy and the event Food 360 degrees would influence intervention policy, institutional and infrastructural in this key sector.

Ms. Sangita Reddy, Chairperson, FICCI AP State Council informed that FICCI has identified Food & Agribusiness as a focus sector, and has undertaken various thought-leadership initiatives both at National and Regional Levels covering across all segments in the agricultural food value chain, from farm inputs to processing to food retailing. She further emphasizes that Government also has accorded a high priority to the sector and has provided many fiscal incentives. On the other hand though substantial investments have been made in the areas of food processing and agriculture, the fact remain that India's share in the global food trade is a meager 1.5 percent. In this scenario, FICCI’s Food 360 will discuss critical issues like key constraints that are slowing the growth of the food processing sector and how they are being addressed, various opportunities that the Indian Food Processing Industry provides, trends in the food trade, changing consumer food habits and its affect the industry, support initiatives taken by the government and opportunities provided in the value chain, global trade opportunities and most importantly, the role of innovation and Technology in achieving aforesaid objectives.

The conference-cum-exhibition will showcase the huge potential for developing the Agribusiness / food processing industry in India in general, and Andhra Pradesh in particular, with a view to forging global linkages. The effort would be to expose delegates to the global developments with regard to trends and opportunities in the food processing industries.

The Conclave is bringing together over 500 professionals in the business of agriculture / food processing, as well as academics, in India and overseas. In the second edition, special focus has been given to the theme of Innovation and Technology within the domain of Agriculture, Agribusiness and Food processing. Special attention is being given to Horticulture and Dairy products through parallel sessions.

The plenary sessions will be held on the themes 'Technology for Raising Farm Productivity', 'Mechanizing farm Operations', 'Technology in Supply Chain Management', and 'Technology in Food Processing, Packaging and Marketing'. Along with the parallel tracks in Metro Agriculture, Horticulture and Dairy, 'IT in agriculture' will receive special coverage.

In addition to the conference, the second edition of the event will also include the Exhibition, FOOD 360 Awards, Business Plan Competition etc.

ICRISAT is the knowledge partner for the event, and their inputs and report will primarily focus on the theme of the conference (Innovation and Technology). This is also in line with their strategic plan – vision 2020 which encompasses Inclusive Market Oriented Development (iMOD). In his message to Food 360, Dr William D. Dar, Director General, ICRISAT has stressed that exploration of opportunities for inclusive and sustainable development to finally surmount the twin challenges of global hunger and poverty in the dry land tropics remains the key objective of ICRISAT and that iMOD is their institutional strategy.

In this manner ICRISAT will promote “resilient development” in order to make the smallholder agriculture increasingly productive, linked to commercial markets, sustainably implemented, and resilient to shocks, especially climate change. This also leads to understand that the agricultural research-for-development community must become more effective in scaling-up innovations for wider impact, and must learn faster in a world in which knowledge is advancing at an ever-accelerating pace.

ICRISAT believes that this edition of Food 360 with the theme “Seeding Success through Innovation and Technology” addresses the important issues mentioned above and explore, deliberate and bring forth ways and means to promote agribusiness and food processing especially benefitting the small holder farmers and entrepreneurs, thus enabling IMOD.

ICRISAT has prepared the Knowledge Paper for the Conference which is aptly titled ‘Seeding Success through Innovation & Technology: Role of Innovations in Transforming Indian Agriculture”. The knowledge paper is a rich collection of research articles by several renowned scientists and is a rich learning experience and an intellectual delight for the people attending the conference besides providing sea of information for prospective investors in the area of agriculture or food processing.

Mr. S. Sivakumar, the Programme Chair & Group Head – Agribusiness, ITC Ltd said that FOOD 360 degrees would identify the challenges across the food & agriculture value chain, and explore innovative solutions leveraging technology. He strongly emphasized that technology should be applied to ensure higher income for farmers and lower prices for consumers at the same time. “One way is to raise productivity through Innovative Technologies and reduce production cost through efficient use of inputs and better supply chain management.”

The various sessions, spread over two days will review, analyze and make predictions for the future for the Indian Agriculture / Food processing sector in general, followed by an exhaustive micro-view of Andhra Pradesh.

- The session on 'Technology for Raising Farm productivity' gives an overview of how farmer can enhance his yields through Soil and water conservation; bio-farming, remote sensing and weather forecasting etc.

- Session on mechanizing farm operations gives a picture on how small farmer can get benefit by using technologies in Micro Irrigation. Mechanizing solutions for small farms will be discussed, in view of rising costs and lack of availability of farm labour.

- The session on “Technology and Innovation in Supply Chain Management” will cover Climate Control technologies, role of mobile phones and ERP in Agri/Food space, demand planning, Inclusive and Participative supply chains. Role of Packaging in supply chain efficiencies, Infrastructure requirements for building optimum supply chain, low cost storage systems and training manpower etc are some of the other issues that will be deliberated at the conference.

- Special focus has been given to parallel sessions, especially on IT in Agriculture, Dairy and Metro Ag (Urban Agriculture). The aim of the MetroAg concept is to bring together a wide and culturally diverse range of stakeholders involved in urban agriculture (in and around cities) in India to share knowledge and best practices, foster linkages externally, and give voice to its advocates and recognition and legitimacy to its activities. Michigan State University is the International University Partner who would give more inputs on MetroAg during FOOD 360 Conference.

The Exhibition will showcase various products, technologies, services pertaining to Agriculture and Food Processing Industries during the two days of the event. The exhibitors include a wide array of companies and institutions in the agriculture and food processing sector with a significant focus on information technology and specialized software technologies in agriculture as well as Organizations and Associations representing the direct interest of farmers apart from media groups, technology providers, retailer association and Research Institutions.

- Mr. J A Chowdary, Co-Chairman of FICCI AP & Conference General Chair said “The second edition of FOOD 360 conference will truly become a wonderful interaction space for most prominent industry representatives of agribusiness and food processing sector. Technology and Innovation will be key aspects in the conference. Efforts will be made to ensure that these technologies are useful to agriculture practitioners and food processors. He strongly believes, the next wave of industrial revolution can be achieved only by connecting Innovation and Technology to the complete value chain of Agriculture and Food Processing.

We take this opportunity to thank the Andhra Pradesh Government, especially Agricultural Marketing department for their encouragement & support. We would also thank all our Partners, Industry representatives, committee members for their valuable inputs and support in making this event a grand success.