27/07/2022 - Agriculture | Mainstorming

IAS Parliament 3 years

KEY POINTS

· The agricultural sector is vital for the Indian economy to sustain the livelihoods of some 58 per cent of families and ensure food security for 1.3 billion people.

· In 2021, the World Economic Forum’s Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR) in partnership with the Telangana government initiated a first-of-its-kind PPP to scale digital technologies in the State’s agriculture sector.

· The lessons from this project highlight that in such a PPP framework, the government should play the role of an enabler that creates a sustainable market for technologies by addressing systemic challenges that impede scaling up.

· A Bain and Company 2021 report estimates that the Indian agritech sector will attract $30-35 billion in investment by 2025.

· Rabo Foundation’s multiple financing programmes with leading Indian financing institutions for agritech and sustainable agriculture.

· PPP for digital agriculture provides a perfect platform to initiate blended finance programmes that take advantage of different types of capital.

· The envisioned blended finance framework can be coordinated by a government agency or multilateral institution acting on behalf of a government.

· The potential for such a partnership is immense and the first step is the need to further investigate the resource requirements, specific value propositions and set-up of a governance structure for such partnerships.