Question – India has an opportunity to become a leading global food supplier provided it has an efficient supply chain and the right marketing strategies. Elucidate. – 1 February 2022
Answer – India has 60.43% of its total land as cultivable land. It has all 15 major global climates, 20 agro- climatic regions and nearly 46 out of 60 soil types. India has exploited these natural advantages well and is presently the largest producer (25% of global production), consumer (27%) and importer (14%) of pulses in the world. India has the world’s largest livestock population and is also the second major producer of fish through aquaculture in the world.
Despite the huge agricultural production, India ranks outside top 10 in the export of food products owing to various domestic structural constraints. India has a huge opportunity to become a leading global food supplier if it has the right marketing strategies:
- Marketing the diversity: India has diversity in terms of religion, food habits and culture. This diversity can be exploited to become the Organic food hub, the Vegetarian food hub, and the Sea food hub, the Meat food hub, among others to target specific consumers in domestic and foreign markets.
- Food packaging, branding and traceability: They are competitive tools to reach the consumers such as those of EU where consumers are more interested in authentic products. At present, India is able to export only a few of its GI tagged products.
- Standards of production: The standards are not only the parameters that define the quality but also aspects like labour and environment. Consumers, especially in developed countries prefer to buy products with certifications indicating sustainable, cruelty-free productions.
- Food safety and hygiene: There is an increasing need to provide greater assurance about the safety and quality of food to consumers.
Further strengthening and making efficient supply chain is also important for realizing the goal of making India a leading global food supplier:
- In advanced countries, the retailers (Wal-Mart, Tesco etc.) have become the Channel Masters of the food supply chain taking over from the food manufacturers. India needs to develop such channel masters who can manage the global supply-demand situation and coordinate the logistical activities.
- A well-organized cold chain starting from the farm level up to the consumer level reduces spoilage, retains the quality of the harvested products and makes the process cost-efficient. If any of the links is missing or is weak, the whole system fails. In India, the state of this chain is fragmented and primitive.
- There is a need to embrace the concept of Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) which refers to a set of strategies that aims to get companies across a supply chain to work closely to serve their customers better and at lower cost.
To become the food supplier of the world, India needs to further enhance the competitiveness of its products. Automation and adoption of new technologies such as use of RFID to track the movement of consignments, barcodes on packaging to trace when, where and by whom the product is created and food irradiation technique for a longer shelf life can be explored.
