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December 5, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
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Haryana to set up food park at
Rai Nestle: from milk to mineral
water Food wastage in India very high:
envoy Agriculture: It’s a commodity for
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Make commercial farming tax
free Life-saving herbs on offer at Agro Tech
Chocolate checks
cancer
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Haryana to set up food park at
Rai CHANDIGARH, Dec 4 — Taking a cue from the proposed national food processing policy, Haryana has geared to set up North India’s biggest integrated agro marketing complex and food park at Rai in Sonepat district. The project costing nearly Rs 500 crore is to be set over 400 acres. “The marketing complex and the food park will not only promote agri business in the state (to which more than 75 per cent of the state population is connected) but will also cater to the growing needs of food- processing and agro based industries of the neighbouring states of Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi”, said an official of Haryana State Agricultural Marketing Board. Officials say that the project which is expected to materialise within two years will improve the viability and profitability of the enterprises which are located within the premises of the new complex. The food park, which will be spread over an area of 150 acres, will offer centralised receiving of the produce, food quality laboratory, packaging, quality control, warehousing, shipment and transportation, marketing and direct sales outlets apart from laundry facilities, lunchrooms, meeting rooms etc. for the convenience of the visitors and those located within. “The food park will be an ideal for new investments and start up companies and for companies whose current production facilities are limited and want to develop new product lines”, an official said. The food park will contain special space for fruit and vegetable dehydration, spice processing, solvent extraction plants, frozen meat, Indian traditional food etc. Integrated agro Marketing Complex (IAMC) has been designed to handle the incoming agricultural produce for value upgradation.”To meet the global standards, it is essential that the focus of agricultural activities is market oriented which increases the need for such marketing complex all the more”, said the official. He said the agricultural produce from the IAMC aims to develop strict quality protocol to project its quality standards, which all the interested parties including farmers, traders and manufacturers should adhere to. According to the plan, IAMC will provide opportunities for value upgradation in various forms like grading, sorting, packaging, auctioning, transportation, and storage. The infrastructural facilities like agricultural produce handling systems, grading centres, cold storages, covered platforms, weigh bridge, loading-unloading bays, quality testing, and also information network for domestic and international domestic rates. “Farmers will no longer have to suffer due to unorganised mandis. Here they will be able to know the value of their produce according to its quality and will be able to get the best price for the same. Information on auction, information facilities will make them more aware and will also help streamline the entire system”, the official said.
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Nestle: from milk to mineral
water CHANDIGARH: Nestle is a familiar name in this region because of its chocolates and milk plant at Moga. What is, however, little known is that the company proposes to add water — mineral water, to be precise — to its milk business. The company’s stall at the Agro Tech fair displays, besides milk products, small bottles of imported mineral water. But the price is steep. Who will pay Rs 70-75 for 250 ml of mineral water? Company officials say it is targeted at the five-star hotel customer. While milk and milk products will remain its bread-and-butter items, Nestle plans to sell mineral water in a big way. Its premium mineral water brands — Perrier and San Pellegrino — have already hit the Indian market and the mass-segment brand, Pure Life, is all set to be launched early next year. Obviously, there is lot of money in water! On the milk front, Nestle has just come out with “Pure Milk”, which is “ultra heat treated” milk available in select cities. The company’s Moga plant reportedly gets milk from 77,000 farmers. The company now proposes to set up five “demonstration farms”, each costing Rs 12 lakh, to improve milk quality and productivity. After Pepsi Co’s project, it is another corporate-farmer success story in the making.
Market share — who is right? That leaves 31 per cent of the market for the remaining eight or nine companies, including PTL, Escorts, Eicher, HMT, Sonalika, L & T, SAME Greaves and Bajaj Tempo. This is something hard to believe. When the Punjab Tractors’ office at Mohali was contacted for its version, the telephone attendant said: “They all have gone to attend Agro Tech. No senior official is available.” Interestingly, the company is not participating in the fair. An HMT official, when contacted, could not tell the company’s market share. Instead he sent a release claiming how the HMT stall at Agro Tech was attracting farmers because of its ethnic look and latest tractor models.
Hafed on the prowl for partners Mr Krishna Mohan, Managing Director, says Hafed plans to have cost-effective mechanised grain handling and storage facilities. It proposes to set up new rice mills and an animal feed complex, besides providing financial assistance for two sugar mills. One of the strengths of this organisation is its direct contact with farmers. The raw material required for processing Hafed consumer products, be it paddy, oilseeds or any other agricultural produce, is directly procured from farmers.
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Food wastage in India very high:
envoy CHANDIGARH, Dec 4 — Mr Peter Sutherland, High Commissioner of Canada to India, hopes to double the bilateral trade between the two nations during the next three years. Speaking at a special CII session, Mr Sutherland said that at present the balance of trade was favourable to India. Of the 1.4 billion Canadian dollar transactions between the two countries Indian exports accounted for $ 1 billion Canadian dollars. While India was exporting tea, coffee and spices, Canada was exporting pulses, peas, oilseeds and fertilisers. Canada, which has a strong agro food industry, has expertise in food processing and a big potential in exporting food products. “Unfortunately, from the bilateral trade, value-added food was missing,” said Mr Sutherland, maintaining that the major companies operating in India were Seagram and McCain besides three others engaged in marketing bottled water. Mr Sutherland said wastage of food material in India was very high. Canada has acquired expertise in storage and transportation of surplus grain. Mr Sutherland said executives of various companies and government agencies were expected to visit India in the coming months. A Deputy Minister of Industrial Trade and a top executive of the Canadian Development Agency, too, were listed to visit India early next year. He said the Vice-Chairman of Novotel would invest heavily in the telecom sector in the country during the next three years. A Vice-Chairman of the company, an Indo-Canadian, had visited India sometime ago and found tremendous potential in the telecom sector, Mr Sutherland said. He said Canada’s interest in education was increasing. This year, the number of students admitted to Canadian universities had gone up to as many as 850. It was expected to touch 1200 next year. Waterloo University, he said, was a top institute in software and information technology from where Microsoft was drawing manpower. Canada, Mr Sutherland said, was the cheapest besides providing highest quality of education to students. Accommodation and other facilities were far cheaper than Australia, the USA and other countries, he said. Talking about visas, he said the number of tourist visas granted this year was 35,000, 26 per cent more than last year while in the case of permanent residency, he said 19,000 permanent resident visas were granted last year and this year it would go up by 58 per cent, he added. Others who spoke at the session were the Agriculture Minister of Karnataka, Mr T.B. Jayachandra, and the Horticulture Minister, also of Karnataka, Mr A. Veerbhadrappa. They said Karnataka had a big potential in agro and food processing sectors as theirs was perhaps the only state where as many as 123 different crops were grown. Mr I.S. Paul, Chairman of the Chandigarh region of the CII, said value-added food would be the main subject of Agro Tech 2002 for which the main partner would be Holland’s Rabo Bank. He said the quantum of vegetables and fruit wasted in India annually was almost equal to the total consumption of fruit and vegetables in the UK. Also present at the session were Dr S. Subramanya, Commissioner, Agriculture, and Mr Charanjeev Singh, Principal Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Agriculture and Horticulture, Karnataka. MoUs signed Another venture was for setting up a liquid organic fertilizer unit in Punjab. The memorandum of understanding had been signed between Bagga Green International of Canada and Kozgro Agrotech India Pvt Ltd for soil enriching bio fertilizers. |
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Agriculture: It’s a commodity for
them CHANDIGARH, Dec 4 — At the CII conference on “Agri-infrastructure” held today, the session chairperson, Mr N. Sridharan, Executive Director, Geerlofs Cooling Industries, and Mr S.K. Sharma, Executive Director, CEBECO India, talked more about their Dutch connection and farm marketing systems, auctions and operations in the Netherlands and less about the type of infrastructure Indian agriculture required. The presentations were on topics like “Financing of agriculture infrastructure” by Mr Rajesh Srivastava, Director, Rabo India Finance Company, “Post harvest technology” by Mr Gagan Bayond, General Manager, Operations, Amalgam Foods, and “Reduction in wastage of perishables” by Mr Sridharan. The focus was on private sector participation and investment with an eye on profits and tax concessions. These business house pundits treat agriculture as a commodity of financial exploitation. They suggested the government should limit its role to that of a facilitator or catalyst. There may be some merit in this thinking. What one really missed was what farmers (if allowed to attend) would have expected from these participants, who spoke on different facets of agriculture. Their presentations studded with statistics showed post-harvest wanton wastage and deliberated on why food (fruit and vegetable) cold chains were required. The new policy on bulk handling and storage facilities the role of Food Corporation of India (which has neither food carrying nor caring capabilities) and value addition were also mentioned. Setting up of special agricultural export ports, tax exemption on investment in agriculture sector, better utilisation of available farm potential and redefining the role of government agencies engaged in doing the same job were suggested. A
young farmer, Mr Khushwant Singh Ahluwalia, wondered aloud as to who would make use of the kind of infrastructure being talked about. “The real concern and worry of an average farmer is how to make both ends meet, cut down on costs and expect better returns on produce. This, despite the much maligned and exploited minimum support price that government announces for selected crop”, he added. He said problems faced by those who plough the land were cast in a different mould than what men of business, trade and industry had in mind. Agreed, who does not wish to make money. But at whose cost? he asked. As the medium of communication at these conference is English, they would be beyond the comprehension of ordinary farmers even if they were to attend these. Even at the Agro Tech exposition at Parade Ground, it is English all the way from the youth engaged by the CII as helpmates to literature and display boards. The Agro Tech theme is, “Impact of globalisation on Indian agriculture”. When the exposition concludes tomorrow, will it leave behind any impact that may make a material difference to the hard life led by farmers? For them the question is one of survival and economic sustenance. See their indebtedness. They want electricity without voltage fluctuation’s cheap inputs, remunerative returns and better market facilities. They need cash in hand, lower rate of interest on loans and a system that will rid them of the hold of the village money-lender.
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Make commercial farming tax
free CHANDIGARH, Dec 4 — Prof A.S. Kataria, Director of the Seed Association of India, speaking at the seminar on the topic “The Indian seed Industry in the New Technology Environment” organised Agro Tech fair here, said that the commercial farming needed to be declared tax free industry to produce quality seed. The quality seed availability is only 10 to12 per cent of the total demand and there is a potential of four-fold growth of the Indian seed industry keeping in view the demand level. About 190 million hectares of area remains under various crops in the country in a year. India has a more than 5,000 high yielding improved varieties in all economic crops. On these, nearly 1081 varieties of field crops and 439 varieties of vegetable crops have been released by the Central Variety Release Committee after necessary multinational testing. The fact is that the Indian private companies have become a major supplier of the certified seed. Their share is near 75 per cent as far as supplying of seed at the farmer level is concerned. Public sector including National Seeds Corporation and the State Seeds Corporation have failed to live up to the expectations of farming community. Interestingly, Indian private seed companies are not opposed to the entry of the multinational seed companies which wanted to introduce genetically modified seeds in the country. There would be lot of opportunities for Indian companies to improve their technology in face of competition from the multinational companies, said a senior executive of a Indian private seed company. Moreover, such multinationals would buy quality seed from Indian companies, he added. Already, certain Holland based companies are depending on Indian companies in the production of seed of various flower varieties. Mr J.S. Sindhu, Director, ProAgro Seed Company, said that there was a lot of opportunities before Indian farmers as well as Indian seed companies to export quality seed to countries like Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam,
Egypt, etc. He said that there was a need to regularise seed trade with Pakistan as lot of seed was being smuggled from India to Pakistan. Mr J.S. Hara, a progressive farmer from Ludhiana, said there was nothing wrong with paddy quality in Punjab. He said that the seed of paddy varieties in the state was of a good quality. It was because of the involvement of food mafia at a big level, Punjab’s rice had become least wanted in India market. He said that the rice prepared from paddy in Punjab was mixed with broken and substandard rice procured from other states by food mafia. He said that it was a right time that Punjab Government broke the back of such food mafia , otherwise it would become difficult for Punjab farmers to dispose paddy as people in southern states had started hating Punjab rice because of its low quality. Mr Arvind Kapur, Managing Director of Nunhems Proagro Seeds Private Company, said that the greatest challenge for agriculture was the population and poverty. Indian population by 2020 would be around 1400 million and the world population would cross 8000 million. Among others who spoke were Mr K.V. Somani, Mr S.K. Kapoor and Dr K.K. Narayanan. |
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Life-saving herbs on offer at Agro Tech CHANDIGARH: For those of you who know little about the medicinal magic of herbs, the counter put up by Herbal Garden and Herbarium of Jogindernagar in Himachal Pradesh at Agro Tech is the place to be. The garden, being manned by the Department of Ayurveda, Himachal government, is into growing medicinal plants which it supplies to private individuals as also to pharmaceutical concerns like Dabur, Jandu, Maharishi Ayurved and Vaidyanath. Among three most important life-saving herbs being grown at Jogindernagar are Taxus baccata, the cancer-curing herb whose one gram costs over Rs 1 lakh. Information about other herbs like Podophyllum hexandrum (vankakdi) and Aconitum heterophyllum is also available at the counter. Vankakdi’s roots cure breast cancer, while the latter herb is used for curing acute diarrhoea. For any information, a senior scientist of the farm, Mr D.R. Nag, is available at Agro Tech. Website on South Indian agriculture The Punjab and Haryana governments could take some cue from this one. The Karnataka Government now provides entire information on South India’s agricultural potential on-line. Information hosted through the website titled Southindiaagri.org includes land usage, land development and soil properties, water management, irrigation, selection of cropping pattern, as also everything on pest control and other marketing policies. The website was developed by the Karnataka Agro Industries Corporation after the Karnataka recognised the need to pool information from various sources and create a data bank under a single window to help exchange of information among various departments. Not only this, there are also plans to launch interactive on-line search from the archives shortly, apart from offering expert advice to farmers through the net. Silk as fine as China’s from J&K Jammu and Kashmir has finally decided to come out of the scars of militancy and interact with other states on the commercial level. The first time participants in the Agro Tech, Jammu and Kashmir traders are drawing large crowds at their counter, especially for the finesse of their bi-voltine silk on display. Also heartening to notice is the fact that Kashmir’s production of silkworm cocoons which it is famous for has improved tremendously despite militancy. This industry is a major source of employment for many uprooted villagers in the strife-torn state. Silk sarees and other fabrics are also being sold from the Kashmir counter. And the sales are quite encouraging. Although Karnataka is also there with its silk, but it may be mentioned that the same is multi-voltine and hence not as fine as that put up by Kashmir. City crowds know the difference well!  |
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Chocolate checks
cancer NEW DELHI, Dec 4 — Chocoholics the world over, for whom there is nothing more enjoyable than eating a chocolate cookie along with their evening cup of tea, can take heart from new research which shows that eating chocolate could prevent cancer and heart disease and, contrary to popular opinion, also help fight tooth decay. Research conducted by scientists from Holland’s National Institute of Public Health and Environment shows that chocolate contains antioxidants called catechins and phenols which could prevent cancer and heart disease. According to researchers, chocolate also helps fight tooth decay by preventing formation of tooth plaque which eats away the tooth surface. In course of the study, Dr Ilja Arts and colleagues examined the chemical compounds in a range of foods and discovered that chocolate contains anti-oxidants called catechins, believed to protect against heart disease and cancer. Until now tea was thought to contain the largest amount but the new research indicates that dark chocolate has four times as many. The researchers found that dark chocolate had 53.5mg of catechins per 100g, milk chocolate contained 15.9mg per 100g, and the black tea infusion contained 13.9mg per 100ml. The research, published in the Medical Journal “Lancet”, also found that in a sample of 6250 men and women, tea was the most important source of catechins, accounting for 55 per cent of total intake. Chocolate contributed to 20 per cent of the total intake of catechins. The researchers said that chocolate, like red wine — which is said to protect against heart disease, also contains chemicals called phenols. These reduce the presence of free radicals that damage cells and DNA, causing disease. According to them, phenolics prevent fat-like substances in the bloodstream from oxidizing and clogging the arteries. Atherosclerosis, or the formation of plaque in the arteries, is caused by oxidation of LDL (low-density lipoproteins) — that’s one of the cholesterol particles. At first, this leads to subtle damage, and then eventually to the formation of advanced plaque. The buildup of plaque can lead to clogging of the arteries, a major cause of heart attacks. By acting as a deoxidising agent, phenolics prevent clogging of arteries, thus averting heart attacks. The researchers also believe that the cacao plant, from which chocolate and cocoa is derived, boosts the immune system and also restricts the formation of the type of cholesterol which damages the heart. According to researchers, recent research is helping us better understand how chocolate consumption affects our health. In fact, most of the bad effects of eating chocolate are either overstated or entirely false, they say. For example, chocolate also has not been proven to cause cavities or tooth decay. Rather, it helps thwart mouth bacteria and stop dental decay. Tooth cavities start when streptococcus mutans bacteria produce a sticky molecule called glucan. This helps the bacteria anchor themselves to teeth and form plaque. These and other bacteria in plaque convert sugars to acids, which eat away the tooth’s surface and lead to cavities. Research shows that the cocoa butter in the chocolate coats the teeth and may help protect them by preventing plaque from forming. The sugar in chocolate does contribute to cavities, but no more than the sugar in any other food. Scientists believe that antibacterial agents in cocoa beans offset its high sugar levels. Cocoa bean husk (CBH) — the outer part of the bean, which usually goes waste in chocolate production — is a potent source of these agents. Research has also shown that parts of the cocoa bean, the main ingredient of chocolate, thwart mouth bacteria and stop dental decay. Also, eating chocolate neither causes nor aggravates acne, as is the general belief. In fact recent research has showed that eating chocolate (or not eating it) does not produce any significant changes in the acne conditions in human beings. However, as in the case of any other food, eating too much of chocolate may cause health problems. The cocoa butter in chocolate does contain saturated fat, which can increase blood cholesterol levels, and high cholesterol can contribute to heart disease. Chocolate is high in calories and eating too much can therefore make you fat, increasing your risk of heart disease, researchers say. Overeating chocolate can lead to other health problems including obesity.
— UNI
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CHANDIGARH, Dec 4 — Mr Peter Sutherland, High Commissioner of Canada to India, hopes to double the bilateral trade between the two nations during the next three years.
