Safe agriculture food production is biggest challenge for human.

Invention and Experiment of science is making agriculture economical profitable. That is helpful for farmers and society. It is helping to fight with challenge of shortage of food. Another side of this help is alarming. Science is being misused in agriculture production. Use of agrochemical is increasing beyond the safe level of application. Residual effects of these chemicals are polluting the water, soil, air and environment. Food production is badly effected with these chemicals.

These chemicals are major reason behind chronicle disease and health problems. Chemicals are used in many forms in agriculture such fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, pesticides, growth regulators, growth promoters, nutrients, ripening agents, other plant physiological activities controllers. Overdose and unwanted use of these chemicals are making the agriculture production unsafe for the human consumption. This is the situation which can be controlled with the proper education and awareness among farmers.

Safe Food production is biggest challenge for human.

Vegetables grown near to major urban location are highly contaminated with the hazardous chemicals due to irrigation with polluted water. Green vegetable are consumed fresh kitchen, they are high in demand in urban area. Sewerage water is highly contaminated with heavy metals, industrial chemicals, and poisonous substances. Consumption of these vegetable cause many diseases and directly hurt to liver, kidney, digestive system. Practices of irrigation with polluted water are also polluting the soil and the contamination can’t be treated. Responsible Govt. departments are not monitoring and controlling these practices. It is direct negligence with the health of citizens.

Meat production near urban location is also facing same problems. Animal and birds are reared on high dose of chemicals. Heavy dose of antibiotics and weight gain hormones/medicines are injected to animals and birds. Consumption of the meat produced from these animals and birds are not safe. Diseases are developing susceptibility and resistance to antibiotics due to heavy dose of antibiotics intake with meat. In some cases meat of diseased animal and birds are supplied to out plate, which can transfer the hazardous virus, bacteria and other microorganism. Seafood is also contaminated with many chemicals. Micro plastics particles have entered in the seafood chain. Human is dumping garbage in sea. Sea is supplying the same garbage to human.

Milk and dairy products are also in the same line. They are also not safe even we leave adulteration in dairy product aside. High level of antibiotics, hormones, chemical residuals and aflatoxins are entering in our body with these dairy food products. Diet of dairy cattle is below the safe level. Farmers and feed companies used unsafe feed ingredients for cattle feed production. Non-recommended minerals source are used in cattle feed. 

Food grain is also not safe. They are produced with heavy dose of agrochemicals which is out of acceptable limit of agrochemicals. Nexus of profit making companies and traders is making it more complex. Regulatory bodies are silent on the unsafe production of agriculture food produce. It will be a big challenge which must be addressed before the issue of hunger. Hunger impacts only few individuals but unsafe food production will impact coming generations.

Can traceability of agriculture produce help agriculture and farmers ?

Even after enough production farmers don’t get the fair price of his agriculture produce and agriculture produce don’t get the market & buyer. In industrial production everything is written in record and books are well maintained for regular audit & inspection. Everything is traceable if it is required. In agriculture production things are not recorded and traceable. Lack of traceability leads to many problems. Agriculture sector faces many problems like farmers suicide, bad farm loan, farm loan waiver, over production, food prices inflation, distress selling, throwing the production on road, storage problem, over import of agriculture commodities, black market selling, adulteration etc. 

What is agriculture traceability ? 

It is record keeping and mapping of the process of agriculture production to processing and reaching in hand of end user. Traceability will include the mapping of farm input supplier, farm inputs, farmers, farmers land, primary market of for agriculture commodity selling, secondary market of agriculture product selling, stockist, transporter, warehousing, processor, finish product stockist, whole seller, retailer and other point or steps involved in this process from farmer to consumer. 

Mapping of farm inputs and farm input sellers 

Quality and quantity of agriculture production depends on farm inputs. If the farm inputs are properly mapped then this will help farmers to ensure if they are getting right product of right quality, they are being not cheated, their product is recommended for particular crop. Last year there was case in MP that some product was recommended for Groundnut and farmers used in soybean crop. The crop was damaged. When the farmers raised the issue of crop damage against the company and administration then company gave an excuse that their product was not recommended for Soybean crop and farmers have used applied product for soybean crop. Once the inputs and inputs seller will be mapped then by the end of harvest season, actual production estimate will be calculated. 

Can traceability of agriculture produce help agriculture and farmers ?

It can be also mapped with farm loans so that govt can ensure that subsidized for agriculture purpose is used for right purpose. Insurance company can also estimate the risk and loss with the help of private data. Farm input is the base record which must be mapped and recorded in proper way. Govt can also monitor if seed companies are making huge profit or cheating with farmers. 

Once the farmers buy the product his land his operation should be recorded and mapped. It will ensure the farmer have done right operations, type of insect & disease has attacked. How were they managed and what type of chemicals were used? If will also give an estimate that how much crop is sown area. IF will be helpful in the case of crop damage, risk calculation. It will also ensure that production is coming to local market from the local area, it is not arrived from other state or imported from other country. It will also assist banks and finical institutes if farmer have enough production for making payment or not. Is it leads that farmers are in problem then his loan can be adjusted as per the norms? It will help govt to identify the right beneficiary. This is most crucial step. If govt has to give incentive to farmers for complete mapping, then govt should do it. Farmer is the start point of agriculture food production then it will helpful to keep the whole chain (from production to end consumer) clean. 

Post harvesting mapping 

Once the agriculture production has mapped then production will come in market for trading and processing. These are point of entry of external material and point to wipe out the production. Primary market of agriculture produce is main point for mapping and traceability. After primary market selling agriculture produces normally go to processing industries and these industries are maintaining the record regularly. If will give an idea that what is farmers getting, what is industry investing in processing and what is industry getting from selling of produce. 

Traceability information and labeling 

After the traceability and mapping there must be mandatory discloser of information under a code which can help end consumer that from where his product is coming, at what stage his product is processed and what type of contents/ingredients are used in preparation of his consumable product. This must be available on public website. Govt can trace the location of the produce, Illegal hording, point of adulteration, detail of stock laying at ware house, transport, processing factory and sells points, point of tax default and many more. Traceability can’t be complete solution but it can give relief to agriculture more than 70-80 %. Any extra profit is made from a channel can be shared with original producer of agriculture produce or Farmer.

Decoding the farmer’s problems : gap between agriculture farm & retail store

Farmers are fighting for loan waiver, minimum support price, high payout for their produce. If we remember the period of 20-25 back. We find that most of edible things available at local grocery shops, were in the raw form produced by the farmers. End consumer used to buy wheat and after cleaning he used get this wheat process into wheat flour from his local flour mill. Consumption of Jaggery and raw sugar was high in comparison to refined sugar. Most of spices were available in raw form in local grocery shops. Now the situation has changed we find that most of edible items are in processed form. We find very few items in raw form direct from farmers field.

There are two major points, first point that farmers have opportunity to grape some part of the market of processed products and another point that farmers are paying more by purchasing the processed items as 98% farmers are Net buyers of agriculture commodities. Besides this we find a lot of imported processed items in our grocery shops, it means either we don’t have raw items to process and market or out food processing industry is not able to full fill the local demand. Here we are not discussing about precious / costly or occasional items. We are discussing just regular items which we use every day.

Decoding the farmer’s problems : gap between agriculture farm & retail store

India Produce 80-90 Million MT wheat 40-45 Million MT is processed into the wheat flour. Demand of wheat flour is increasing. Farmers are trying to sell their produce in local market as raw. In another case for example pulses. Demand of clean and graded pulses is increasing in market. People don’t have to time clean and grade it. But farmers are selling the raw uncleaned ungraded pulses to local market. End customer goes for cleaned and graded pulses. Even farmers himself purchase clean and graded pulses. 

There huge opportunity for farmers in local market for process and sell their items. Farmers is missing this opportunity. Due to uncleaned and ungraded quality imported processed food makes spaces in Indian market and east share in demand and create competition. Indian produce 22 MT pulses, and import around 5 Million MT pulses. Imported pulses are in ready to use condition. It is completely cleaned and graded. Indian garlic is not getting the enough price in local market, but Chinese Garlic is creating space after a lot of transportation cost from Chinese agriculture farm to Indian kitchen.

This gap can be of three form, Quality, Quantity and Consumable / sellable form. Farmer can supply good quality product by cleaning and grading, farmers can produce the desired quantity as per demand of local market and in third gap farmers can process the agriculture commodity in consumable form. Farmers should be encouraged for selling of clean and graded commodity. Farmers should explore the local market and they should identify and process what they can sell in local market. 

Consistent quantity and quality are two major issues. IF farmers and govt can work on these issues then farmers can get good share of profit which is going to big industries and exporting countries. Profit share of regular items like Daal (lentil), Dalia (wheat), Aaata (flour), Pickle, Jaggery and other can be go directly to farmer’s pocket.