IICA and National Rainfed Area Authority to organize a seminar this month to highlight importance of convergance of Agricultural and Business Interest

Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs and National Rainfed Area Authority to organize a seminar this month to highlight importance of convergance of Agricultural and Business Interests

The President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil, in her address at the concluding event of the �India Corporate Week, 2009�, had stated that agencies closely linked with agricultural development and other stakeholders should look for �out of the box� and �innovative� solutions for realizing benefits of technologies, aggregation of inputs and outputs, value addition, marketing and entrepreneurship. They should consider evolving a basic �model� to bring farmers into a partnership arrangement to obtain the benefits of economies of scale which is transparent where farmers retain confidence about the ownership of land and protection of their interests. The issues relating to providing the necessary legal framework to function in a competitive environment should be examined and effort should be made to develop a consensus among stakeholders about the contours of such a model.

As a follow up of this, Shri R.Bandyopadhyay, Secretary, Ministry of Corporate Affairs had held a meeting with Shri J.S.Samra, CEO of the National Rainfed Area Authority (NRAA) on December 23, 2009. In the meeting, it was decided that the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs and NRAA will work together to provide a platform for convergence of the agriculture scientists, entrepreneurs and farmers to conceptualize innovative business models for the development of farming in the rainfed areas.

In this direction, NRAA and the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs will organize a seminar on January 22, 2010. It will be inaugurated by Minister of Corporate Affairs, Shri Salman Khurshid. In it the domain and technologies experts in the area of agriculture sciences, trade and industry chambers, institutions and other stakeholders will participate to develop synergy in identifying methods of developing economic activity in the rainfed areas so as to improve the income levels of the farmers. Efforts will also be made to encourage business sector to develop new methods of working so that they can involve the farmers and the agricultural output in their business models for mutual value creation.

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