An Interesting Case in Mobile Commerce

Cellphones have been an unprecedented revolution in modern life. In the agricultural sector cellphones have made connecting with farmers in far off regions both rapid and cost-effective, and a slew of telemarketing efforts have by major players in the agri-business sector have followed. 

In a notable example, Bharti Airtel and IFFCO have come up with a partnership to reach rural farmers and assist them through giving them the information they need, when they need it, in the language they want, for FREE. Currently Airtel has launched the iCreate competition (available to the students of select colleges) and is asking for your take on how to help this service grow even further. We as a neutral third party agree with the spirit of this event, and we would strongly encourage you to participate. The deadline by which to submit the Executive Summary is the 28th of August, and as a carrot, the grand prize is Rs 1.25 Lakhs!

Even if you do not participate, you are strongly encouraged to read their summary of the business and the industry, both are really good reads. The link, for those who have been waiting, is:http://www.airtel.in/i-create/

Put your thinking caps on, this one is worth it!

Sanjit

BAMBOOzled...?

Mention Costa Rica and you’ll be transported to a serene, lush place with magnificent beaches and dense forests. Welcome to the World’s greenest and happiest country. One can write thousand words about the beauty of the place, but what I want to share with you is a story of different kind, a tale of endeavours which has made the country the paradise it is today.

In 1986, Costa Rica broke away from the conventional construction technology, and adopted a new Building technology with Bamboo as the building material. This one step has helped the country to address multiple issues of Environmental Protection, Housing Construction, Rural Development and Sustainable Development. As a substitute of wood as the building material, Bamboo has prevented deforestation and serves as a seismically sound material for the earthquake prone region. The project has resulted in technical training, massive bamboo cultivation, community and labour organization, environmental assessment of the technology and production of furniture and handicrafts for export. So far 700 bamboo houses have been built, 200 hectares cultivated with bamboo and 400 people trained in building, cultivating and crafting of bamboo.

Bamboo has been an important construction material since antiquity. It has been used in the eastern hemisphere for centuries (see the pictures below). It is often labelled as the "poor man's timber" because developing countries in Asia, Africa and South America rely on it for food and as a building material. Bamboo housing has the potential to alleviate many environmental and social issues. However, its implementation requires challenging the prevalent mindset and a considerable amount of research and development.

Costa Rica has overcome these barriers and exemplified the power of the traditional know-how in the present. Today we, as a scientific society, are looking for new solutions to the ever-growing problems, but we never seriously consider looking for the solutions in our traditional heritage. Maybe this is the time to pause and look back, and treasure the traditional wisdom we have been gifted with.

Divya

Tom-a-to, Tom-ah-to.

Today we're talking about the tomato, everyone's favourite fruit. Or is it a vegetable. Hmm. Well, a quick search and Wiki tells me exactly what I need to know. Click here to find out.

But I'm going to talk about more than just the Tomato. I'm talking about the most eye-catching spectacle in the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Yes, it's La Tomatina, the annual vegetable fight at Bunol, Valencia. The film and the tomatoes edged me to look further into the festival and I got some interesting facts about it!

It is supposed to start with a man climbing a pole, approximately the height of a two storey building, to get a piece of ham (the Spanish are a bit loony, no?). A water cannon is then fired to indicate the start of the festival and then there are no holds barred, except for a few rules put in place to avoid people from getting hurt amidst all the chaos. Every person is supposed to squash the tomatoes before throwing it, making the process messier, and no one is allowed to bring anything that may start a brawl. 

After an hour, the water cannon signals the end of the festival and then the streets are cleaned by the water from the river which, along with the acidity of the tomatoes, refurbishes the city. For those feeling queasy about the food wastage, you'll feel much better knowing that the tomatoes are imported from Extremadura, and are of significantly lower quality than those which are eaten. In fact, the tomatoes are grown especially for this purpose. 

The festival is supposed to have started in 1940 when the people from the town  had hurled tomatoes at the local council members in protest and the trend continued year after year. 

So now we know that throwing rotten tomatoes has been in vogue since the 1940s and we can be thankful to Zoya Akhtar for introducing us to such an innovative use of the tomato.

Harshita Kumar

An eccentric food lover speaks

What will the world eat?

Today’s entry will be one that strolls across some of the larger issues that encompass agri-business as a sector, both at a national and international level. These random thoughts may seem a tad disjoint, but we intend to fill in the gaps that link them together as the days go by, and help you understand the story behind the story, for a most interesting and intricate story it is.

The next forty years will be ones of great change. That may be amongst the most generic (some will say ‘globe’) statements you’ll even come across, but in the agri-business world, it's a particularly prescient summary of what is to come.

We all know that our population as a race has been increasing rapidly, it’s blared across to us in our classrooms, in our media, and in innovative ads for a particular 3G service. The rather logical extension of that thought is that a growing population needs to eat. What we eat, and how much we eat is closely related to what we can grow, how much we grow, and how many people can afford it. Amartya Sen’s Food Aggregate Demand theory, the one that won him a Nobel Prize in Economics, explained how even in times when the food supply is abundant, if people cannot afford food, artificial famine will ensue. Today we are seeing a sort of inverse of this theory taking hold; in a burgeoning middle class with a new found hunger for better food, and the money to demand it, we see a rise in the demand for more exotic foods such as Goji berries and Broccoli, as well as a newfound preference for better varieties of existing produce.

In short, the people want more to eat, more choices in what they eat, and to eat better food. To meet this growing demand, new food has to come in to the system, but from where exactly is a billion dollar question. It’s worth observing that as population pressure accelerates as it is predicted to, the stress on existing resources will only ever grow, and there is already a branch of thought that believes that our current agricultural output is coming at the cost of the future fertility and productivity of the soil, so just how future growth is attained is a very serious question. For the record, some interesting ideas that have been offered as long term solutions include growing food in vertical farms (think transparent skyscrapers as farms), growing food in what could be described as a spaceship, and just growing normal food more sustainably. At some level the organic food movement tried to follow that third path.

As a good marketer or entrepreneur knows, a demand unfulfilled is money passed by.  Till now, most of the business world has been content with leaving the status quo intact, and not taking any major effort to reform the agricultural sector, both due to a lack of infrastructure, and also because of the risk inherent in agriculture. In ‘first’ world nations, agriculture is largely mechanized, and the output per farmer and farm is high, allowing economies of scale in the supply chain. In less developed nations such as India, until farmers can be linked and co-ordinate their efforts, economies of scale will continue to elude us as a nation.

A revolution is coming, one that will decide how tomorrows society grows, and we will be the generation to witness it. A stable and nutritious food supply is the foundation our entire civilisation, since the Sumerians to the sultans to our senate. As resources dwindle, the most basic ones like food and water will be what the next wars are fought over, unless of course, a revolution in the fields precedes one in the streets.

Sanjit Singh

Welcome! Self-Service Only.

Greetings to one and all! The Agri-Business Club at IIMA is proud to present:

The Daily Mango

It's hard to explain what this blog is about. Perhaps it's better if we told you how it all began...
Scene: One pleasant evening at IIMA, two members of the aforementioned club were having a chat.
#1: Hey, dude, we should have a blog!
#2: Why?
#1: Well, we could talk about so many things. Like, agri-business stuff, you know.

#2: Uhh but it should be relevant to Agri-Business, you know. We are a serious club, no fooling around! Give me an example!

#1: Like... how to raise a bee hive, or what if tractors could fly or .. which came first, the chicken or the egg? And the MOST IMPORTANT question of all! - "What is the difference between a mango and a banana?" 

#2: Oh .. alright, great. Sounds like a plan. And by the way, what is the difference between a mango and a banana?

*Dramatic pause*

#1: We really need a blog.

Well, that's our simplified version of it. Details are really unnecessary.
The Daily Mango will bring to you everything you would need to know about agri-business. It will also tell you why the sector is the rich man's best kept secret, and sometimes we'll throw in a bunch of words like "agronomic potential" and "inter-sectoral externalities" just to make us sound good.
All in all, a healthy read and great value for the money.

Wait, what's that? We're doing this for free? Dang it!

Watch This Space.