Seeing agri-business enterprises as a way out of subsistence farming, InfoDev, a programme of the World Bank, and Icrisat (International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics) have come together to create a framework agri-business incubation (support) system, and agreed on the Agribusiness Community of Practice with four elements here recently.
These elements are access to finance, introduction to new markets, awareness of policy issues and capacity building, according to the Hyderabad Declaration issued after the three-day workshop in which 50 representatives from 15 countries participated. It would be implemented after specific details are worked out at an upcoming global agribusiness incubation conference, to be held here in February.
William D Dar, director general, Icrisat, told reporters that the agri-business incubation partnerships were meant to help small farmers who are in subsistence farming to move to the next level of transition farming, and later to commercial or market-oriented farming. Currently, close to 60 percent of Indian farmers were in subsistence and 20-25 percent in transition while the rest are market-oriented farmers, according to Dar.
“These interventions are key in facilitating the transition,” he said, pointing out that growth in agriculture was four times more effective in reducing poverty compared to the other sectors of the economy.
