Trade List

Farm mechanisation

Farm mechanisation is a method of replacing manual labour by machines in the pre-sowing, post sowing and harvesting stages of the farming process. There are a set of machines developed which address issues related to availability of time, labour and capital involved in agriculture. Farm mechanisation also aids gender equity in agriculture by providing labour solutions which are inclusive and aids participation of both men and women in agriculture. Looking at the small size of farms and high cost of ownership of such machines, it is not economic every time to own such machines individually by small and marginal farmers.  Hence there is a scope of setting up enterprises owned by Agri entrepreneurs who can avail this machinery to farmers in need on hiring basis. Such enterprises are named as "Agro Service Centres" or "Custom Hiring Centres".

Nursery

"A vegetable nursery is a place or an establishment for raising or handling young vegetable seedlings until they are ready for permanent planting." In the past, the farmers themselves produced the seedlings required for transplanting at a lower cost, as most of the vegetable varieties were open pollinated types. Now, most commercial farmers are adopting intensive vegetable cultivation using high yielding variety and improved character selected seeds to augment productivity. As these seeds are expensive and sometimes available in limited amount, converting each individual seed into a healthy seedling becomes essential and this requires intensive nursery management. Also farmers are diversifying their crops in an attempt to improve their livelihoods. Accordingly, vegetable seedling production system is also gradually changing from open field nurseries to production in protected raised beds or seedling trays, and specialized seedling production industries/enterprises are taking off in some intensive vegetable growing areas. Healthy seedling can enhance the yield of the crop to the extent of 25%.

Seed production

Seed is the most important input to carry out agricultural production activities. During recent years the availability of seeds to match with the local soil and climatic conditions has been affected by huge demand of seeds with scaling up of agriculture and emergence of many private seed companies who are supplying HYV or Hybrid seeds. Traditionally, villages used to be sufficient with indigenous variety of seeds, be it seeds for cereal crops or vegetables. Various studies suggests that many of the indigenous seeds are yielding less than half of its potential and conveniently replaced by their hybrid alternatives in practice. With an aim to make our villages again seed sufficient and providing famers better alternative for commercial seeds, some enterprises are visualised which can take up local seed multiplication and preservation activities associated with experts in this field.

Poultry

Backyard Poultry (BYP) has been the age-old livelihood activity for poor farmers. Raising BYP is an income-generating activity that has enormous potential to increase incomes and improve nutrition for resource-poor households, especially in remote, tribal and ecologically vulnerable areas. Families that keep chickens can use the birds for their meat (either to consume or sell), and live chickens can serve as a currency to pay for immideate needs. In addition, they are low cost, easy to take care, and can empower women to take active entrepreneurial roles in their community. Poultry are also prolific breeders and have a good survival rate in adverse climatic conditions. Althoough unorganised, the native indigenous and improved bird comprises 70 % of the total poultry production.  Here enterprises would be set up to provide backward and forward linkage to indigenous and improved breed poultry growers.

Goat Services & Marketing

Goat and Sheep as an anytime money (ATM) for rural households. The prime reason being these small ruminants are kept under closed rearing with civilization due to demand for lean red meat and its lavish taste and flavor, high price and huge consumption across every community group and negligible social taboo for its acceptance.  Irrespective of the hardiness of these animals to extreme climate and weather, various managerial faults lead to huge economic losses. To address the challenges entrepreneurs can play a significant role to ensure the present managerial practices of farmers as well as scaling the enterprise of farmers and earning their own revenue for self-livelihood. The prime intervention includes Breeding, Medicine, Vaccination, Diseases, Food and Nutrition, Shelter.

Mushroom

There is an old Chinese saying which states that " MEDICINES AND FOODS HAVE A COMMON ORIGIN ".

Edible mushrooms once called the "food of the gods" and still treated as a garnish or delicacy can be taken regularly as part of the human diet or be treated as healthy food or as functional food. The extractable products from medicinal mushrooms, designed to supplement the human diet not as regular food, but as the enhancement of health and fitness, can be classified into the category of dietary supplements/mushroom nutriceuticals (Chang and Buswell, 1996). Mushrooms constitute a most rapidly growing new food category which the current health-oriented public is increasingly enjoying. It is anticipated that the avocation of mushroom farming will become a very important activity in the development of weaker sections of rural communities. And at the same time youth of the village will get opportunity to provide seeds (spawn) and services to mushroom farming individuals and groups to increase their income by introducing a new cultivation technique.

Irrigation Services ( Solar Based, LI, Diversion Channel, Micro Irrigation Services )

Water is one of the most important input for cultivation like seed, plant nutrients etc. Maintaining the right soil moisture enables plants to absorb nutrients from soil, help in increasing microbes’ population hence help facilitating microbial activities and maintaining soil health. Availability of water varies place to place. Water is mostly available through rain, rain harvesting tanks, perennial streams or deep down the earth in aquifers. One needs to judiciously choose the source of water for its long term availability for agriculture as well as for keeping the soil chemistry intact. Various crops also have their varied water requirements and accordingly irrigation techniques like flood irrigation, ridge irrigation with bio mulching or drip or sprinkler based irrigation can be adopted. An entrepreneur can help the farmers choose between these choices and create and maintain a sustainable irrigation infrastructure.

Agriculture Marketing & Services

Marketing of agricultural products is as important for better performance in agriculture as farming itself. In traditional and subsistence agriculture, farmers were producing mainly to meet their family needs and their marketable surplus either too low or not. Hence, farmers in traditional agriculture were not well connected to product and input markets. Conversely, in modern and commercial agriculture, farmers are producing with a purpose to earn a profit and their marketable surplus is high. The strategy should, therefore, to market first and then produce the product. Hence, marketing of agricultural commodities begins with the production decisions of farmers and ends once the product is reached to the end consumers. The marketing entrepreneurs will be concerned with the marketing of farm products produced by farmers and market intelligence required by them in the production of these farm products. To serve the purpose, interested candidates once selected will go through formal training and exposures around marketing

NPM Enterprise

The Farmer’s perception on modern inorganic based agriculture is slowly changing as many of them have fallen into debt trap due to increased investment in agriculture per unit area over the last two decades/ It has not only affected the farmer’s economy but has also affected their health and soil to a great extent. The Soil productivity has also gone down and it has become dead. The farmers are now really in search of an alternative way of doing agriculture. Non Pesticide Managment based pest control measures provides for a least hazardours pest control technique. Hence adopting it farmers would reduce investment to get an optimum production. The idea is to establish an NPM shop in an enterprise model by an individual agri entrepreneur to provide bio inputs along with services to farmers to bring large areas under sustainable agriculture practices. In this model the enterprise will only provide bio inputs to farmers at a reasonable price.