- The document provides suggestions to boost agricultural productivity in India through small-scale farm-based products, cooperative societies, and infrastructure like cold storage and general storage facilities. It also suggests establishing schools for agriculture to provide training to farmers. Specific recommendations include identifying local products to convert raw materials into finished goods with longer shelf lives, forming district-level cooperative societies for marketing and employment, building public-private cold storage facilities, and utilizing existing schools and their staff to regularly train farmers.

1. SWARNABHOOMI
Sowing Prosperity: Boosting
agricultural productivity
SwarnaBhoomiIIT
IIT-Madras

2. Summary
• Business model suggestions
– Small Scale farm based products
– Co-operative societies for Agriculture
• Infrastructure suggestions
– Cold Storage Facilities
– General Storage Facilities
• Knowledge suggestions
– Schools for Agriculture
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3. Small Scale farm based products
• Why:
– Farmers have less active work/day/year
– Raw products give less profit
– Longer shelf life for finished products
– Lack of knowledge on possible finished products
– Lack of skill to create finished products
• How:
– District level identification of products from local produce
– Identify skills and required training personnel
– Employ training personnel in schools and give free training
– Aim to have all farmers capable of two jobs – farming and finished products
• Examples
– Tomato to jam/ketchup conversion
– Rice, potato to Packed foods preparation meeting market standards
– Bamboo to paper conversion
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4. Co-operative societies for Agriculture
• Why:
– Middlemen reap profit while farmers sell at loss
– Many small employers lead to unguaranteed employment
for farming labor
• How:
– Form District level Co-operative society with participation
from each village
– Each Co-operative society has direct access to urban
markets
– Salaried employment for farm labor employed by Co-
operative and leased to the farmers
– Soil management and other agro guidance
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5. Cold Storage Facilities
• Why:
– Short shelf-life forces selling at low price
– Vegetables like tomato can be prolonged in cold
storage
• How:
– District level storage built with Govt + local Private
fund, due to cost intensive nature
– Rent goes to local investor as alternate business
model
– Govt provides loan for farmers to pay rent
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6. General Storage Facilities
• Why:
– Loss of vegetables, grains to rain/sun force immediate low
price sale
– Most producers/farmers lack infrastructure for basic
livelihood hence cannot store produces
• How:
– Rich locals build storage facilities and rent to farmers
– Panchayat-level motivation and guidance to build
– Provide incentives to build and maintain such
infrastructure for renting, certify and manage rent rates
– Protects goods from rodents, rain and sun till farmers sell
at their choice of price
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7. Schools for Agriculture
• Why:
– Lack of information about government schemes
– Reduced productivity due to simple mistakes
– Lack of locality specific common knowledgebase
– Availability of schools
– Availability of free time with farmers
• How:
– School staff can be trained easily on agricultural issues
– Regular training to all farmers on all aspects of farming and
animal maintenance
– Schools can create and distribute locality specific common
knowledgebase
– Small scale product identification and skill training
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