India Pulses and Grains Association (IPGA), the nodal body for India's pulses trade and industry today announced that the fifth edition 'The Pulses Conclave', their biennial global pulses conference will be held from Feb. 12th to 14th, 2020 at Amby Valley City in Lonavala, Maharashtra.
IPGA expects close to 1500 trade stakeholders from India and key pulses exporting countries like the USA, Australia, Canada, Myanmar, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, etc. to participate in 'The Pulses Conclave 2020' (TPC 2020).
The Pulses Conclave 2020, as a part of its agenda, will not just discuss increasing domestic production and consumption but will also bring to fore other areas of the trade like improving processing efficiencies, increasing consumption, exports, value addition, protein extraction, post-harvest crop management, etc.
"Hon'ble Prime Minister's vision is to double the farmer's income by the year 2022 and a huge effort has been put into achieving the same. The result has been that India's pulses production has steadily grown every year from around 19 million tons in 2013-14 to 23 million tons in 201-19 and the target for 2019-20 is 26.30 million tons. IPGA's agenda and road map going forward will be to encourage its members to take advantage of the increased domestic production, balance imports vis-a-vis the production and demand thereby ensuring that the Indian consumer does not face any availability crunch nor high retail prices", said Jitu Bheda, Chairman - IPGA.
"In recent years, there was deflation in food prices that has brought the overall consumer price index down, leading to a crisis for farmers. When the prices of agricultural commodities are globally low, India's export in the sector is not so impressive. To make matters worse, the wholesale price index of food items is lower than the agricultural inputs for most years for key reasons in the cost of inputs such as irrigation, electricity, pesticides, and fertilisers. Therefore, the Government will have to keep a close eye on the production, the demand and the availability to ensure that farmers get the right price and pulses remain available and affordable for consumers", added Bheda.
"The Conclave programme typically is built around the dissemination of global and domestic pulses production numbers, global and domestic prices, supply and demand scenarios. However, at TPC 2020, while covering these aspects of the trade, IPGA is looking to go beyond and IPGA's focus, by the end of the Conclave, will be to try and put together a roadmap that will help the Indian pulses trade be able to contribute to the Hon'ble Prime Minister's vision of making India a $ 5 trillion economy through retail sale of pulses, processed pulses, pulse derivates, and value additions, all of which will drive investments in the entire value chain", said Pradeep Ghorpade, Chief Executive Officer, IPGA.
Pulses are the key source of proteins in India and IPGA believes that apart from addressing the availability of pulses ensuring the affordability of pulses is equally important.
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The Indian Government needs to work on creating a plan that allows both farmers and consumers to be benefitted. IPGA will be engaging with the Government to pursue the inclusion of Pulses in the PDS to make them affordable for the BPL population, leading to an increase in demand and drive an increase in production.
The Indian Government over the last year and a half has introduced a number of tariff and non-tariff barriers on the import of pulses to ensure that farmers get appropriate prices for their produce and are encouraged to try and increase domestic production levels.
IPGA will be stepping up its efforts in engaging with key Ministries like Agriculture, Consumer Affairs, Health & Family Welfare, and Commerce to discuss various initiatives to devise and implement programs that yield win-win results for farmers as well as consumers.
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