Uttar Pradesh will make significant use of agritech to improve its agricultural production, dairy, poultry and fisheries sectors. It will provide better market linkages, reduce waste, improve cold storage infrastructure and ensure better supply to the food processing industry with a view to becoming a $1 trillion economy by 2028.
Deloitte India partner Anand Ramanathan said agriculture will be one of the main focus areas for projects implemented by the state government to meet the deadline.
The Yogi Adityanath government hired Deloitte India to play a key role in this effort. “The preliminary strategic design phase has been approved and implementation of various initiatives has officially begun,” Ramanathan said. Business line in online interactions.
Agricultural sector contribution
Currently, the size of the economy of the northern state is $240 billion, of which agriculture contributes $60 billion, including the Union region. Agriculture must increase to $250 billion to achieve the state’s overall goal of becoming a $1 trillion economy.
“We are working with different stakeholders, including private stakeholders and large multilateral donor agencies, to develop the agricultural sector,” Ramanathan said.
The consultancy is working with agtech companies. It is in touch with about 40 agritech companies, which Deloitte India believes will play an important intervention role in production.
“If you look at sugarcane. Because it is strictly controlled, there is a good understanding of the production. But in other areas, it is all very outdated. So can we use modern technology to estimate the production?” said Ramanathan .
data collection
Agritech companies will be relied upon to conduct scientific crop surveys, better collect data to avoid leaks and increase farmers’ incomes.
“We are helping agritech companies collect data on various crops. These players work with Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) to provide inputs and collect outputs. Region by region we have identified if we work with some of these agritech companies to purchase the output , farmers will get better returns,” he said.
Through better technology deployment, agritech companies will have a huge impact, with agricultural output expected to increase by 10-15% and farmer incomes by 5-10%.
Agritech will be used for better weather monitoring, forecasting, understanding insurance, enabling better compensation, precision farming and providing farmers with better market linkages. Crop surveys can be done through drone technology and machine learning, while artificial intelligence can be used to estimate prices.
Fillip for food processing
Among related industries, food processing is the main target. “We have divided our plans into five broad areas,” said a Deloitte India partner.
The food processing industry is a part of the industry and people are looking at it from an agricultural perspective as the industry relies on agricultural products. “We have separate goals for each different space. Deloitte has identified approximately 70+ opportunities. If you look at the huge opportunities, one of the big areas is how we think about agricultural productivity,” he said.
One of the key areas of agriculture is dairy and fisheries. “UP is the largest milk producer but most of the production belongs to the unorganized sector,” he said
Therefore, our aim is to have the private sector play an important role and to get the industry organized to bring more added value. ” Ramanathan said.
UP is a large importer of poultry products and fish, mostly from Bangladesh. “We’re looking at whether the state can become a net exporter in some of these areas,” he said.
Opportunities in the dairy industry
In the dairy industry, there is a huge opportunity to use technology to obtain more cows to control the stray animal problem. The state has increased subsidies for this, which will lead to higher productivity.
“As part of this, we are working with private dairies and all the local players have excellent collection infrastructure. So our view is, can we look again at these private players collecting milk from farmers and bring All this milk goes into organized business units to produce more value-added products like ghee and butter,” he said.
Deloitte India is working on a three-way process involving cooperatives, private dairies and farmers. The idea is for them to work together to ensure efficiency in milk procurement.
On the fisheries front, Deloitte India and the Uttar Pradesh government are looking at all ponds. There are many inland ponds and one of the big jobs is to map them first.
Mapping ponds through agricultural technology
“Agritech is again being used to map the location of these ponds and the potential to raise fish in the ponds using intensive techniques so that more yield can be achieved. The process now is that the entire pond is auctioned to some player. But are we There can be a more rigorous process that holds them accountable for achieving a certain level of output,” Ramanathan said.
The restructuring of existing fisheries arrangements is a major area of development. This will include the development of hatcheries and fishery seed. The country will invest in research and development of local fish species that will help determine what measures should be taken to strengthen input into the sector.
The main area of focus for the poultry industry will be setting up more micro clusters than large food parks. This will help in setting up a small feed mill or dairy or storage space.
The state has a vibrant sugar economy. “If you look at sugar, you will see that it is actually booming now because of biodiesel and the energy aspect of sugarcane farming. So the focus is on how to grow them through value-added production and ensuring that farmers get the MSP (minimum support price) ) and all the sick plants were able to recover. Most of them have been revived and are performing well due to energy,” said a Deloitte India partner.
Create a seed park
One of the challenges in ensuring high yields is obtaining good quality seeds. “We are considering setting up seed parks where farmers can get the latest hybrid varieties as well as local varieties as per their requirements. The seeds will be distributed through government agencies,” Ramanathan said.
Uttar Pradesh has around 75,000 government employees in the agriculture sector, including horticulture, to ensure that these issues are addressed effectively.
Deloitte India is learning from models in other parts of the world, including China, to provide farmers with knowledge on the latest growing practices and inputs, thereby helping to improve yields and yields.
Millets are the current focus in the country with Bundelkhand launching a campaign for nutritious cereals. This is because millet is considered native to the region. The focus is on efforts to make the country self-sufficient in meeting the demand for poultry feed.
The advantage of Bundelkhand is that it shares borders with Uttar Pradesh to the west and east and therefore, the crop can be supplied to other states for fodder production.
Uttar Pradesh will also seek to provide better processing facilities, including basic grading and sorting, to encourage higher pulse production.
crop insurance
“The experience comes from Maharashtra, which has more than 201 packaging plants, of which about 160 are located in the state. UP will try to replicate Maharashtra’s success with grapes and other mango fruits, ” Ramanathan said.
Uttar Pradesh has popular mango varieties such as Dasheri, Langda and Chausa. Efforts will be made to export it to other countries first and then abroad.
As the monsoons and weather change over the past few years, crop insurance will play an important role. “We are working with different donor agencies to improve the crop insurance ecosystem. We will see how we can take advantage of building private spaces and look for microfinance institutions to increase crop insurance,” said Deloitte India partner.
In particular, the project will consider the establishment of micro-cold storage to prevent the waste of fresh produce. He said this will help in constructing 12ft x 12ft cold storage not only at farms but also at markets.
“We are moving away from the whole concept of large-scale food processing to building micro-clusters. In addition, one region, one product has been identified for all food categories and their ecosystems.”
investor friendly
At the same time, through agricultural science and technology enterprises to establish market linkage, export Amla Products are sold to other parts of the country. Each region will make similar efforts to identify similar products.
Global best practices will be followed for value chains that are specific to one crop, as New Zealand does with kiwifruit. We will try to replicate this on guava and banana.
Ramanathan said Uttar Pradesh will also strive to brand itself as investment-friendly given the skills of its people, better law and order and other attractive options like water.
Deloitte India has collaborated with many countries, but this is the first of its kind on such a large scale.
The consulting firm has submitted its strategy and has begun implementation. It has about three and a half years to achieve this goal.
