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The main objective of the programme was to sustain and conserve the biodiversity in the river under the Namami Gange Programme.

 

 

The ICAR-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute, Barrackpore, Kolkata celebrated the 71st Republic Day marked by a ranching programme by releasing 50,000 of fingerlings of Indian Major Craps in the River Ganga at Gandhi Ghat, Barrackpore. 

Briefing about the ongoing degrading situation of the holy river, the Guest of Honor, Deepankar Bhattacharya, I.P.S., DIG, Vivekananda State Police Academy urged the local people for initiating an active coordination to make the Ganga clean.

Dr. B.K. Das, Director, ICAR-CIFRI and Principal Investigator, ICAR-CIFRI-NMCG Project highlighted the present project activities and need of ranching in the river Ganga. The fingerlings were produced by artificial breeding of Gangetic carp brooders.

The fishermen and other stakeholders were distributed the awareness materials in Hindi, Bangla and English. The ICAR-CIFRI ranched more than 22 lakhs of fish seed in the different depleted stretches of river Ganga covering four states.

The main objective of the programme was to sustain and conserve the biodiversity in the river under the Namami Gange Programme. More than 150 senior officials from VSPA, NMCG project staffs and ICAR-CIFRI members were present during the river ranching programme.

 

The main objective of the programme was

Owing to good rainfall in January and ample soil moisture due to excessiv e rains, wheat production in the country would go up by 10.6% to 113.06 million tons in the Rabi season of 2019-20, as compared to 102.19 million tons produced in the previous year. 

Skymet Weather Services – India’s largest private weather monitoring and Agri-risk Solutions Company has released the first volume of the ‘Rabi Report’ for the year 2020. The report talks about the fact that India received an extremely good amount of rainfall during monsoon and post monsoon time frame. The first fortnight of January across major Rabi crop producing states also received adequate rains which have been quite beneficial for the overall health of the crop. 

Wettest Southwest Monsoon in the last 25 years

2019 has been a year of extremes. It had the wettest Southwest Monsoon in the last 25 years with 110 per cent departure. Record floods were experienced in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra as a result. Besides witnessing record numbers of cyclones (9) in the Indian Seas, it has also recorded the longest cold spell over North India during December. Extremely heavy snowfall has been recorded across all the northern hills from October to December. On one hand, extreme heat wave conditions were prevalent during the pre-Monsoon season (April – June 2019), while on the other, the post-Monsoon season (October- December 2019) witnessed a large country-wide surplus.

 Good rains recorded during Monsoon and the post-Monsoon season has helped reservoirs to fill. This has boost sowing of the Rabi crop, which is clearly indicated by the sowing numbers so far. Availability of good soil moisture across major producing states has also laid the foundation for better crop productivity. Of course, other aspects like temperatures in winters (mainly for crops like wheat) will play a vital role in production. Changes in seasonal temperature affect the grain yield, mainly through phenological development processes. 

In this report, they have deeply analyzed the impact of weather on the major Rabi crops and anticipated the changes that could occur on the production side. Through this analysis, Skymet has arrived at the outcome that Wheat production in the country would go up by 10.6% to 113.06 million tons in the Rabi season of 2019-20, as compared to 102.19 million tons produced in the previous year.

 

 

 

 

Owing to good rainfall in January and

 Luxxur herbicide is formulated with a precise combination of active ingredients optimized to control many grass and broadleaf weeds in spring, winter, and durum wheat fields.

 

Bayer Crop Science, world’s leading seed manufacturer and Life Science Company have recently launched new wheat herbicides which will be available as ‘Luxxur herbicides’ from now on in the company sites. As per reports, ‘Luxxur herbicides’ is now available to cereals growers across the globe for the growing season 2020.  

 About Luxxur Herbicides

Classified as a Group 2 herbicide, Luxxur herbicide is formulated with a precise combination of active ingredients optimized to control many grass and broadleaf weeds in spring, winter, and durum wheat fields, says Bayer officials. 

Luxxur herbicide provides exceptional control of Group 1 resistant grasses, such as green foxtails, yellow foxtails, and wild oats,” said Matt Smith, customer business adviser at Bayer, in a Bayer news release. “It also works well for controlling Canada thistle and narrow-leaved hawksbeard, which are two especially problematic weeds for growers.”

 “In trials, we’ve been pretty impressed with how well the weeds were controlled with Luxxur herbicide, even in drier conditions where the crop doesn’t canopy well,” said Carrie Pederson, a northwest sales representative at Bayer, in a Bayer news release. “We’re seeing excellent weed control.”

 “Luxxur also offers rotational flexibility. “One of the main draws with Luxxur herbicide is the fact that farmers can rotate back to sensitive pulse crops, such as lentils in the following season,” said Pederson in the Bayer news release. 

 Farmers can use Luxxur herbicide safely on all wheat. For optimal weed control, apply Luxxur herbicide between emergences and jointing, say Bayer officials. To maximize crop safety, growers should apply Luxxur herbicide before jointing. Spraying early helps growers maximize efficacy, tackling early emerging perennial and winter annual broadleaf weeds to help ensure a clean field, say Bayer officials.

 “I’m excited because Luxxur herbicide gives growers another option for managing weeds,” said Smith in the Bayer news release. “Problems with weeds can grow exponentially, year after year. Luxxur herbicide is a new tool we have to combat those specific weeds cereals growers are dealing with”, Smith added. 

 

 Luxxur herbicide is formulated with a precise

Mechanized centralized kitchen constructed to serve healthy and hygienic meals. Over 30,000 children will be benefited from the mid-day meals initiative.

Jalna, Maharashtra: Governor of Maharashtra, Bhagat Singh Koshyari recently inaugurated the ‘Padma Bhushan Dr Badrinarayan Barwale Centralized Kitchen’ at the Golden Jubilee School campus in Maharashtra’s Jalna district.

 The Honorable Governor served Teethi Bhoj to all the school children present to mark the celebration.  Sangitaji Gorantyal, Nagararadhyaksha of Jalna and over 100 children and representatives from Mahyco Monsanto Biotech (I) Pvt. Ltd. (MMB) and Annamrita Foundation were also present at the occasion. Rajeshji Tope, Honorable Minister of Public Health and Family Welfare and Raosahebji Danve, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution shared their congratulatory video messages. 

Spread across an acre of land, the ‘Padma Bhushan Dr Badrinarayan Barwale Centralized Kitchen’ has a capacity to serve mid-day meals to over 50,000 children and adheres to food safety standards and ISO compliances. The kitchen is automated with a mechanical conveyor, automated hopper, cooking cauldrons, idly unit, and vegetable cutting equipment thereby ensuring hygiene and safety during the entire cooking process. The kitchen will also house a food testing lab to ensure safe raw material usage and nutritious food to the children. 

Speaking at the occasion Rajendra Barwale, Chairman, Mahyco said, “For over 50 years, Mahyco has been collaborating and working for the welfare of the community and we are extremely pleased and humbled to be associated with the great work of Annamrita Foundation. This effort would provide nutritious mid-day meals to thousands of school children in Jalna district and would help alleviate malnourishment in the region.”

 As a part of the ‘School Nutrition Project’, the ‘Padma Bhushan Dr Badrinarayan Barwale Centralized Kitchen’ aims to serve healthy and balanced meals to children who have limited or no access to food and lack awareness on the importance of the same in their daily diet. The ‘School Nutrition Project’ is a two-pronged effort that addresses on one hand the challenges of malnutrition and classroom hunger, while on the other hand, helps educate underprivileged children thereby reducing dropouts, illiteracy and poverty.

Dr Radha Krishna Das, Advisor, Annamrita Foundation, Maharashtra said, “Our aim is to provide children with a versatile wholesome menu and a Teethi Bhoj (Paneer dish once a month) which they really look forward to. We thank MMB, Golden Jubilee Education Society as well as the local representatives and administration for their support.”

Mechanized centralized kitchen constructed to serve healthy

The firm aims to build a large platform of grain storage sites that can help FCI and the private sector to make grain storage more efficient 

Coimbatore based Agritech and logistics firm Leap India Food and Logistics Pvt. Ltd. had recently announced that it has raised INR. 164 crore in Series B funding from the Danish SDG Investment Fund and Neev Fund. Leap India said in a statement that the Danish SDG Investment fund is a fund that is managed by Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU). 

The startup plans to connect grain supply chain from farm to business, and also to transform itself into a robust Agri-Silos and Logistics platform. Leap India would look forward to utilizing these funds towards a tangible future growth.

 Leap India promoters have said that SDG Fund’s investment, along with round two of investment from the Neev Fund that would be backed by the UK Government’s Department of International Development (DFID) and State Bank of India. This would allow people to expand and reach a critical size, and also team up with strong, foreign institutional investors.

 The founders state that the aim of Leap is to build a large platform of grain storage sites. This can help FCI and also the private sector to make grain storage more efficient with the use of technology and modern storage infrastructure. 

Investors both from Neev Fund and IFU said that they are addressing one of India’s most pressing challenges, to improve food storage efficiency and reduce undernourishment. They even said that this fructifies the investors’ fidelity to the Sustainable Development Goals of poverty alleviation by doubling farmer income through food security in India.

 

The firm aims to build a large

Goodmylk aims to utilize this funding to further expand their distribution capabilities, create new institutional partnerships

Goodmylk, a Bangalore-based vegan milk brand in India, has raised INR 3 crore in their second seed round from some of the most prolific investors in the plant-based space. They welcome to their cap table deeply mission-aligned investors Elisa Khong, Sandeep Singh, Ginni International Ltd and their very first VC partner – VegInvest, whose investments include JUST, Rebellious foods, Veggie Grill, Nutpods, and other prominent companies in this space. 

This round follows their INR 2.5 crore raise announced in January 2018, bringing their total funding to INR 5.5+ crore to date. Goodmylk aims to utilize this funding to further expand their distribution capabilities, create new institutional partnerships (they recently announced their collaboration with nationwide coffee chain Blue Tokai), and invest into making path breaking products that are fully plant-based, functional and accessible. 

The brand currently makes award-winning products like their cashew-oat mylk, peanut curd, a fully plant-based butter that melts and mayonnaise. Their products are available for purchase online and ship across India.

 

 

 

 

 

Goodmylk aims to utilize this funding to

As per the report of Drip Capital, rice exports for FY20 expected to fall due to geo-political situations, tighter trade norms and higher MSP on the commodity by government.

US-based trade finance company Drip Capital has released a report detailing the state of India’s rice exports. Chalking out detailed insights from proprietary data and on-ground conversations with exporters, the report analyses the country’s rice shipments, with Basmati rice occupying a major share.

Rice contributes to over 2% of overall exports within the Indian export basket

Within the Indian export basket, rice contributes to over 2% of overall exports. The sector reported a CAGR of 14% between FY2010 to FY2019. However, rice exports this year have seen a decline across the globe with a major dip coming from the Middle East due to heightened geopolitical tensions. A resulting fall in prices has further aggravated the sector’s woes. 

Rice exports have grown at a CAGR of nearly 14% between FY10-19

Haryana is the top Basmati rice exporting state in the country with a CAGR of 3% between FY16-19, shipping US$2,410 million in FY19 alone. Gujarat is second with shipments of US$1,106 million in FY19; however, Gujarat has posted an impressive CAGR of 47% over FY16-19. Other major contributing states are Delhi, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

Rice being a Kharif crop (August – November) shows a clear seasonal pattern in exports as well. The four months post-harvest (December – March) see over 40% of annual exports as compared to the rest of the year. The current year’s (FY19-20) rice exports have also been trending much below previous years’ performance.

 Pushkar Mukewar, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Drip Capital said, “YTD exports so far are looking bleak with Iran, the biggest export market, seeing a 22% fall in shipments.  Other export markets like the UAE (33%), Nepal (23%), Yemen (2%), Senegal (90%) and Bangladesh (94%) have also seen a fall in rice shipments from India. On the other hand, exports to certain nations broke from the trend to post growth, such as Saudi Arabia (4%), Iraq (10%), Benin (8%) and the USA (4%).”

 

About Drip Capital

 Drip Capital is a California- and India-headquartered fintech company, focused on solving the working capital problem for SME exporters using technology. The company was founded by Pushkar Mukewar and Neil Kothari, both roommates at Wharton. The 120-member team now comprises of engineers, data scientists and trade finance veterans across offices in Palo Alto, Mexico City, and three offices in India – Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. 

Drip has strategic partnerships with a number of key export promotion organizations, including FIEO (Federation of Indian Export Organizations) and EEPC (Engineering Export Promotion Council). Drip’s working capital offering to exporters is a credit line, which ranges from US$100 thousand to US$2.5 million, depending on the exporter’s size and requirement.

 

 

 

 

As per the report of Drip Capital,

MoFPI is focusing on building cold chain infrastructure across the country, for seamless transfer of perishables from production to consumption areas, through the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY) 

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) along with the central government has sanctioned 39 mega food parks and 298 integrated cold chain projects throughout the country, said Rameswar Teli, minister of state for Food Processing Industries, in a reply in the Lok Sabha. As per reports, the government is trying to fill in the gaps across the value chain and establishing the cold chain grid through this new sanction. 

Moreover, MoFPI is focusing on building cold chain infrastructure across the country, for seamless transfer of perishables from production to consumption areas, through the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana (PMKSY), he said.

  Components of the PMKSY

The component of the schemes includes integrated cold chain and value addition infrastructure, mega food parks, creation of backward and forward linkages, creation and expansion of food processing and preservation capacities, agro-processing clusters and operation greens.

 These schemes aim at arresting post-harvest losses of horticulture and non-horticulture produce by encouraging the creation of cold storages/ primary processing/ and transportation facilities across the country.a

MoFPI is focusing on building cold chain

The book edited by Sanjay Kaul, Chairman, NCML covers four broad themes – the present commodity space, the recent initiatives in technology and innovation in agriculture, the new emerging areas and the critical theme of managing commodity risk.  

 The NCML (National Collateral Management Services Limited) released the 11th Edition of the India Commodity Year Book 2020. The guest of honor was Ramesh Chand, NITI AYOG, Government of India. He unveiled the book in presence of Sanjeev Kumar Chadha, MD, Agricultural Marketing Cooperative Marketing Federation of India Ltd (NAFED) and other eminent dignitaries.

This book included major topics like increasing farmer’s income, remote sensing, GIS applications in agriculture, transforming the agriculture supply chain through technology and innovation, organic farming in India and the state of agritech starts ups in the country. Another critical subject on which the book sheds light is Managing Commodity risk-which talks about both the pre as well as post harvest risks faced by farming community and mitigating factors present in the country.

 Prof Ramesh Chand, Member, NITI Aayog, said that Indian agriculture sector faces issues in customized technology and implementation of the policy reforms at ground level, especially at the state level.Speaking at ‘Release of India Commodity Year Book 2020 & Discussion on Union Budget Announcements for Agriculture Sector’, Prof Chand said, “Technology is the prime mover and India is facing serious problems both in terms of technology and policy reforms.” He further added that at the state level various laws like Model APLM Act, Model Agricultural Land leasing Act and contract farming needs to be further pushed. 

He further said that the states should be encouraged to play an active role in the overall growth of the agriculture sector and emphasized on the need for private sector to come forward.

 “We need to give the right role to right people and institutions. Market and the private people are the right people to pay competitive prices to farmers and we should remove hurdles which come in the way of the market,” said Prof Chand.

He said that private sector should play their due role and market should play its due role in agriculture sector. “Most of the problems of agriculture sector are not inherent to agriculture in India but due to the reason of not changing the regulations which needs to change from time to time,” said Prof Chand.

 He said that for the first time the 15th Finance Commission has included a provision to give performance linked grants to states to undertake some agricultural reform. “The Commission has included reform in agriculture sector among the top 5 areas for which next year states will be provided with incentives,” said Prof Chand. 

He added that agriculture sector is witnessing the growth but with an increase in cost of production and it is one of the reasons why we are losing on export competitiveness. “When you increase the yield average cost of production increases and when this increase, obviously farmers will start asking for higher and higher prices. This factor has started affecting the Indian agriculture sector,” Prof Chand said. 

T R Kesavan, Chairman, FICCI National Agriculture Committee & Group President, TAFE Ltd said that in order to meet the requirements of increasing population, we need to produce more and reduce the wastage. “If we can save what we have and the need to produce higher will also start coming down.”

Siraj Chaudhry, Co-Chair, FICCI National Agriculture Committee and MD & CEO, NCML said that in India the problems are different at different parts of the country and the solutions cannot be one or few changes. “Every regions problem needs to be addressed differently,” said Chaudhry. 

 

 

The book edited by Sanjay Kaul, Chairman,

Insurance Foundation of India organized a daylong Seminar on” Risk Mapping and Analysis of Cattle Insurance Portfolio for Improving the Cattle Insurance Penetration in India” prepared by National Insurance Academy, Pune . 

 Seminar was released for the benefit of the farming community who are interested to know more on the livestock insurance. 

The programme was so conceived that the complete knowledge on the issues related to the livestock were discussed and also replied to the questions by the delegates. The programme was moderated by Babeeta Sharma, Secretary, BFSI Committee of PHD, The theme address was disclosed by S K Sethi, Founder & CEO, Insurance Foundation of India with Banna Ram Meena, Chairman of Saras Dairy, Alwar, whose suggestions may be helpful to the Government to come out with the concrete policy on Livestock Insurance. 

Dr O P Chaudhary, Joint Secretary, National Livestock Mission and Chairman, Animal Welfare Board of India presented the Government point of view towards the livestock Insurance. Dr Balla Swamy, General Manager, New India Assurance Company Limited also presented the companies policies towards the livestock.

 Dr Steward Doss, Faculty Member, National Insurance Academy and Dharmendra kumar Sharma, Consultant Rural Insurance, Haryana State Government and Anupama Rathore, Actuarial Analyst, MistEO India Private Limited, Thiruvanathapuram, Kerala presented the information related to the Livestock Insurance. 

Dr Arun Jain, FIII, Deputy General Manager, New India Assurance Company Limited also apprised the delegate in very simple language about the issues pertaining to the Livestock Insurance. Vinod Jain, Chairman, BSFI Committee, PHD Chamber summarized the complete idea of the Livestock Insurance in the beginning of the Seminar.

Points covered in the Seminar were – Livestock Risk – Should Insurance be made mandatory? Quality of animals can be improved with investment through loans; Investment & improvement of Veterinary infrastructure is needed in a big way to support the farmers; Product innovation needed in Insurance; What can we learn from other countries?;Availability of Cheaper, sufficient loans is essential for growth of this part of our economy. 

The number of farmers having 2-10 animals attended the seminar to get aware themselves about the issues pertaining to the Livestock Insurance.

 

Insurance Foundation of India organized a daylong

MoU aims to provide technical support to the food industries in the North East region. It will benefit the farmers, producers and entrepreneurs.   

 A memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed by Central Food Technological Research Institute, CSIR−CFTRI, Mysuru with the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) to set up a Liaison Office in Guwahati, Assam to provide technical support to the food industries in the North East region. It will benefit the farmers, producers and entrepreneurs.  

 APEDA has undertaken many promotional activities recently to bring the North East states of India on to the export map. In 2019 five international buyer seller meets were organized by APEDA in Assam, Manipur, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim to showcase the potential of agriculture/ horticulture and processed food products including organic produce to open the export window from the North Eastern States. 

Capacity building is another such area where APEDA is keenly focusing to hand-hold the new exporters from the North East region. Recently, APEDA organized an exposure visit in Maharashtra, considered as one of the major export hubs, to acquaint the exporters and state officials from Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya and Nagaland on export oriented farming, pack house and modern food processing units.

 APEDA has also organized specific outreach programmes and training on export process for the stakeholders from the North East region. North East region has tremendous potential in converting large areas into organic certification for which training on the requirements of the National Programme on Organic Production (NPOP) have been imparted to the North East states to create awareness on the vast potential of organic agriculture and exports. 

North Eastern Region has immense opportunities for food processing and other agri-business that can contribute to the economic upliftment of the region and create facilities for startups. It is expected that the liaison office of CSIR-CFTRI will strengthen the food processing sector in the North East and will have multiplying effect on the export of traditional and processed food products from the region.

MoU aims to provide technical support to

 Perfect Day, a global leader in the research, development and production of flora-based dairy, announced the closing of $140 million Series C funding round led by Temasek with substantial involvement from past investors.

This third round of funding will help accelerate Perfect Day’s business growth—including expanding its production capacity, going deeper with partner opportunities and extending its product portfolio—to further its commitment to bringing consumers the dairy products they know and love, completely animal-free.

 “In 2019, we showed that our manufacturing process works robustly at commercial scale,” said Ryan Pandya, CEO and co-founder of Perfect Day. “We were able to demonstrate with our ice cream launch—which sold out in a single day—that flora-based protein delivers on the dairy experience, and that people are excited about what we’re doing. Our focus in 2020 will be manufacturing and commercializing the protein in multiple continents, through multiple partnerships spanning different dairy product categories,” the Indian American added.

The company plans to announce its first commercial partnerships early in 2020. Energized by the company entering commercial production, and by the successful limited-edition ice cream launch in July, both Temasek and Horizons Ventures—who led Perfect Day’s Series B funding earlier this year—have returned to support the company’s growth, alongside past investors. This round brings Perfect Day’s cumulative funding to over $200 million.

 

 Perfect Day, a global leader in the

The acquisition of Needle Rock Farms includes 240 acres of farmland, water rights, all farm equipment, barns, greenhouses and irrigation system  The acquisition of Needle Rock Farms includes 240 acres of farmland, water rights, all farm equipment, barns, greenhouses and irrigation system.

Panacea Life Sciences, Inc. is pleased to announce its acquisition of Needle Rock Farms (NRF), located in the town of Crawford on the western slope of Colorado. Adam and Julia Desmond founded Needle Rock Farms CBD in 2016 and have been growing quality, Colorado hemp for the past five years. Panacea’s procurement includes 240 acres of farmland, water rights, all the farm equipment, barns, greenhouses, and irrigation system. The purchase also includes the 2019 hemp grow cycle. With NRF’s state-of-the-art outdoor grow facility and use of only mountain spring water from onsite springs and creeks, it embodies the true spirit of Colorado.

 The Desmonds are excited for this new opportunity as “the expansion with Panacea and this partnership emphasizes each company’s commitment to complete vertical integration within the CBD industry, and it allows Panacea to have a chain of custody from seed to end products through the entire process.” Panacea’s ability to manage the entire supply chain is important not only to the two companies but to Panacea customers, contract manufacturing partners and key distribution partners such as Charkit. As a leading provider of raw materials and ingredients to the personal care space, Charkit vetted numerous CBD companies and selected Panacea Life Sciences as its exclusive provider due to the company’s commitment to quality, innovation, and complete transparency of the supply chain.

 The acquisition purchase price was a combination of cash and stock. The farm is slated to achieve its organic certification in 2020. The plans for Panacea’s hemp farm in 2020 include seed development, experiments with different strains, and leveraging the intellectual capital of our investment partner, 22nd Century (XXII).

XXII was granted an exclusive sublicense in the United States and a co-exclusive sublicense in the remainder of the world, excluding Canada, to patents and patent applications relating to the cannabis plant that are required for the production of cannabinoids, the major active ingredients in the cannabis plant. 

Leslie Buttorff, CEO of Panacea commented that “Panacea plans to use the XXII strains in the 2020 and 2021 grow cycles. We are excited to add Needle Rock Farms to our capabilities and it adds to our full seed to sale capabilities. With the addition of the farm, we are no longer dependent on other farmers to meet the needs of our brand of consumer products.”

 About Panacea Life Sciences, Inc.

Panacea Life Sciences, a woman-owned and woman-led company, is dedicated to developing and producing the highest-quality, medically-relevant, legal, THC-free, hemp-derived cannabinoid products for consumers and pets from our 51,000 square foot, state-of-the-art cGMP extraction, manufacturing, testing and fulfillment center located in Golden, Colorado. Panacea operates in every segment of the CBD product value chain, from cultivation to finished goods, with stringent testing protocols employed at every stage of the supply chain from seed-to-sale.

 

 

 

The acquisition of Needle Rock Farms includes

Through the pilot with the Fair Labor Association (FLA), Syngenta was able to improve wages at seeds field production growing areas in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. 

Syngenta recently highlighted the release of a report from the Fair Labor Association, Seeds of Change. The report marks the culmination of a three-year pilot project commissioned by Syngenta to improve wages in India’s agricultural industry.

Through the pilot with the Fair Labor Association (FLA), Syngenta was able to improve wages at seeds field production growing areas in Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. The report details Syngenta’s six-step action plan to address the issue of low prevailing wages in India. Actions included conducting an internal review of procurement prices and calculations, increasing awareness among internal and external stakeholders, and strengthening wage documentation.

Syngenta’s Good Growth Plan demonstrates the company’s commitment to look after every worker, striving for fair labor conditions across the entire supply chain network. 

“Our partnership with the FLA is a critical enabler of ensuring we take care of the safety and human rights of every worker in our supply chain,” said Bill Tomlinson, Head of Global Seeds Production & Supply. “Our efforts for fair labor conditions extend across the world, and we hold our suppliers and partners accountable to high standards of health, safety, environmental and working conditions.”

 In addition, the project highlighted the importance of needing an industrywide approach to make a bigger impact than a single company acting alone. 

“This report underscores the urgent need for collective action to lift agriculture workers in India out of poverty. No company can achieve this alone,” said Sharon Waxman, President and CEO of the Fair Labor Association. “Governments must create a legal framework to require wages that are above the poverty line, and companies need to work together – even in the absence of government leadership – to provide those wages. Only then can we lift millions of agriculture workers in India and around the world out of poverty.” 

The Syngenta Seeds business currently sources from 12,000 farms in India, either directly or indirectly, and also works with 200 seeds organizers to communicate and manage relationships with farmers. Beyond India, Syngenta is actively engaged in fair labor initiatives across the world.

 

 

Through the pilot with the Fair Labor