Agribusiness Matters with Venky Ramachandran

With every David and Goliath Agritech player now co-opting ‘Regenerative Agriculture’, ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ has officially entered the trough of disillusionment. Mind you, in a country like India, ‘regenerative agriculture’ is as much illegible as ‘organic agriculture’ or ‘natural farming’. Rightfully so, because each agroclimatic zone adapts ‘agroecology’ based on their specific ecological niche. In a country with more than 1.8 million organic producers spanning over 2.66 million hectares (State of Organic Agriculture 2023), the challenge that India faces in the context of scaling ‘organic agriculture’ is extremely complex. In August’22, when I wrote ‘Organic Foods and the Tricky Question of Luxury Beliefs’, I wrote, “Organic food is now a "luxury belief" among the privileged rich who are now obsessed with talking so much about synthetic chemicals inside food, without realizing how badly the economics is stacked against the farmer to grow food and gain a penny more, leave aside safe food (and genuine concerns one may have about safe food)” What makes organic food ‘wickedly tricky’ boils down to trust vs certification. “On the one end, Trust doesn’t scale. You can only investigate a smaller group of farmers and investigate if they are serious about regenerative farming practices. On the other end, Certification is never foolproof to track the food production process. Even if you install sensors, farmers know their way through and can make sure that only approved data passes through.” Should we dismiss “Organic farming” because of its operational measurement challenges? How do we address the tricky question of luxury beliefs in organic foods? How do we scale agroecology in smallholding contexts? To navigate these challenging questions, I spoke with Ramanjaneyulu GV, one of the foremost advocates for pesticide-free farming in India.

Ajay TG, General Manager, Westfalia Fruit India, joined the Agribusiness Matters Townhall to talk of possibilities for agritech startups in exporting fresh and processed produce to international markets. In this spellbinding, candid conversation with hard-earned ground insights, we discussed, Why Westfalia globally has been focusing on geographical adjacencies- focusing squarely on avocado while scaling new areas of production? How Westfalia has responded to climate change-induced supply chain disruptions? What are the necessary operating conditions to scale the fresh produce export business from a smallholder grower perspective? History and Legacy of Westfalia How the partnership between Westfalia and SamAgri unfolded? What is the old ABC of fresh processed produce and what is the new ABC? How consumer behaviour patterns are changing when it comes to fresh fruit consumption? What major drivers led to avocado market growth in India? Why is it necessary to challenge trader misconceptions? What can we learn from Israel’s avocado market? What is the importance of growing the ecosystem for fresh fruit produce?

How do you navigate the tensions between being mission-driven and building a sustainable business in organic/regenerative food space? Although Ryan and Shashi come from diverse worlds, there is a fascinating parallel in the work they are doing in the regenerative/organic food space. Whether it is GoodSam Foods or Akshayakalpa Organic, both are mission-driven, focusing more on direct-trade, local-supply chain models, and building deep relationships with farmers and farm partners.Building an organic/regenerative food brand requires a different mindset when compared to any other CPG food brand.Today, most organic food brands build on the narrative of how terrible the food that is produced by conventional agriculture and promise a better saner alternative. This narrative has gained a lot of currency, especially after COVID when people started making radical changes to their food and lifestyle.How can organic food brands take this approach forward? Organic food branding defies all our conventional ideas about branding and no wonder, consumers often tend to get cynical, as it plays with their deep existential fears about the safety of what they eat. When it comes to organic food branding, less is more, and more is less. We have seen enough farmers' smiling pics, QR Codes, and rusty packaging that the whole thing, when you are cynical, starts to feel like a charade.When you are selling organic food, you are talking about a living biological entity that changes in response to seasons and weather conditions. In such a case, how do you carry a brand promise that focuses largely on repeatability for the trust to get built? In this 60-minute conversation with Shashi and Ryan joined by other members and friends of Agribusiness Matters, we explored the following questions. In Akshayaklapa calling itself Akshayakalpa -infinite possibilities- what does this organization attempt to do? Why has Akshayakalpa only worked with 1200 farmers over the last thirteen years of operation? Is there a tension between building a mission-driven organization (GoodSAM got recently registered as a B-Corp) and building a larger brand that speaks to a bigger mainstream audience? For Shashi, What are the things Akshayakalpa will do and will never do? For the direct-trade model GoodSam follows, what are the trade-offs Ryan deals with every day in his ops role? How does Akshayakalpa approach certifications? How do you scale trust? How do you help mainstream conventional farmers transition towards organic? How to select the right farm partners for mission-driven businesses, especially when you have to scale your operations? How to approach the question of social fairness for mission-driven businesses, whether they are operating in India or in Africa? What are the challenges in building mission-driven businesses that empower women farmers? Why is ecology more important than addressing social inequities? How do you approach regeneration at the dimension of economy beyond producing regenerative food?

Subbarao looks back at his illustrious thirty-plus-year career to reflect (in hindsight) on what has changed and what has not in the Indian agri-inputs market landscape. In this extremely personal conversation with opinionated agribusiness insights that stem from first principles, Subbarao talks of How reading “Social Impact of Computers” changed his mind about the role of technology and how he fell in love with genetics and plant breeding. How doing a Ph.D. gave him an edge in the world of agribusiness and the struggles of doing molecular biology in India during the eighties. His early days when he joined the seed production business during the eighties and nineties and his early work on GM Mustard. What have been the most significant shifts he has seen over the last thirty years in the Indian agri-input market landscape and what he perceives as the gap between “shift” and “transformation” in the Indian agri-inputs market landscape His perspectives on Value Selling, the role of Push vs. Pull, and what never changes in the fundamental social relations of farmers in the market. Whether Digital Distributors can substitute Distributors in the agri-input channel landscape. The Cycle of Consolidation and Deconsolidation among the leading agri-input players How the Culture of Big 6 Agri-Input Players have dictated their particular strengths and gameplays What was the original idea behind setting up Plowlab ventures? How to make sense of the perennial problems that bedevil Indian Agriculture and why is it important to separate man-made problems from nature-driven problems?

In this fascinating conversation, we explored What is the idea behind Bharat Krishak Samaj? How to understand the role of Farmer advocacy organizations vis-a-vis farmer unions? Why does politics remain an albatross around the neck of Agriculture? Why do farmers not have much say on the policies that affect them despite being a majority vote bank? How to understand this contradiction in a global context where farmers, say, in the US have a bigger say on policies than Indian farmers?  Why is decontextualized policymaking a bane for Indian Agriculture? What is the difficulty of taxing agricultural income in India? [Ajay shared an interesting anecdote based on his interactions with the late Indian finance minister Arun Jaitley] According to Ajay, what would ideal farm reforms look like? Why should governments focus on human resources instead of infrastructure? Why we should document failures in Indian Agriculture? Why is it wrong to assume that fertilizer subsidies are helping farmers? What policy changes could steer Indian Agriculture towards an agroecological paradigm and create alternative markets and marketplaces? How does Ajay see the clash of paradigms between the Industrial agriculture paradigm and the agroecology paradigm? Is there a clash of paradigms in the first place? How can we build markets and value chains that value the quality of the produce? How can we change the design of the market? Why do Indian farmers not prefer to have cows these days? How has the Indian political party BJP supported natural farming paradigms?