By Shyam Pandharipande, IANS
Nagpur (Maharashtra) : A Mumbai-based oil firm has launched an ambitious contract farming project in the crisis-ridden western Vidarbha region under which it will procure castor seeds from farmers at an assured price.
The programme by Jayant Oils and Derivatives Ltd (JODL) hopes to support at least 25,000 farmers.
The firm, which exports castor oil and its derivatives to 44 countries, is targeting to bring 50,000 acres under contract farming in the five rain-fed districts of Vidarbha, where debt-trapped farmers continue to commit suicide in large numbers despite several relief measures implemented by the government.
JODL’s captive cultivation programme comprises the supply of quality seeds, technical support for cultivation and provision of threshers and tractors at farm gates for collecting the entire produce at an assured price, company mentor Manek Kanga told IANS.
“The payments will be instant,” he said.
Kanga pointed out that unlike Reliance (Reliance Industries’ Fresh Foods division), which is buying farm produce from cultivators only to sell it through its outlets, JODL was buying castor seeds for its own consumption in its oil derivatives manufacturing plants.
“They are middlemen. We are into genuine contract farming,” he said adding that JODL would also be ready to share its profits with the farmers besides paying them a fair price for the seeds.
Clarifying the company’s modest target in Vidarbha as against the region’s huge untapped potential for castor seed contract farming, Kanga said the small landholdings of farmers could pose a logistical problem.
“But the farmers can devise some kind of pooling or cluster system so we can park our threshers and tractors at strategic points to collect and cart away the seeds,” he said.
“I can also help them create cooperatives,” he added, pointing out that he had set up poultry farmers’ cooperatives in Gujarat way back in 1963.
Farmers in Vidarbha must be trained in modern, profitable agro-management with stress on multi-cropping and the region’s vast barren lands should be well cultivated, Kanga said.
“My impression is that the government is neglecting the region’s agriculture even after so many suicides,” he said.
The leading castor seed procurer in Gujarat, JODL, which has its state-of-the-art seed crushing plants in Vadodara and another one at nearby Ekalbara for sebacic acid (a derivative of castor oil), doesn’t do contract farming in that state.
With relatively large landholdings, farmers in Gujarat have been cultivating castor for a long time and do not need contract farming, JODL’s economic advisor Sunil Bhandare told IANS.
“The company buys its requirement from the traders there,” he said.
A sturdy plant that grows in arid and semi-arid conditions with minimal inputs or protection costs, castor could be an excellent inter-crop with pulses like tuar and moong, and soybean, JODL scientific advisor Rajlaxmi Kolaskar said.
“It can also be grown along with ginger and turmeric or even as a solo crop like a progressive farmer Gulabrao Marode has shown,” Kolaskar told IANS.
Driven by its Biotor division, JODL’s contract farming project, which has so far only 20,000 acres owned by 7,000 farmers under its ambit in Maharashtra, envisages the vast untapped potential in Vidarbha, general manager Vijay Joshi said.
The company received an enthusiastic response from over 3,000 farmers to a lecture demonstration rally at Akot in western Vidarbha’s Akola district, about 250 km from Nagpur, earlier this week, Joshi told IANS.
Joshi recalled that farmers in Maharashtra turned away from castor cultivation because of the cumbersome manual seed-culling process.
Involving the region’s two farmer cooperatives – Dr. Punjabrao Deshmukh Sendriya Shetmal Utpadak Sahakari Sanstha and Sant Gajanan Maharaj Sendriya Shetmal Utpadak Sahakari Sanstha – JODL hopes to support at least 25,000 farmers in the region in the first phase of the project.
The Rs.8-billion turnover company aims to cover 500,000 acres in Maharashtra in the next five years.
“Gujarat accounts for 72 percent of castor seed production in the country. Maharashtra, with only two percent share in the country’s produce, has tremendous scope to increase it in a short span of time,” Joshi said.