Paradigm Shift In Focus Is The Need Of The Hour For Indian Agri-warehousing

Indian Agriculture dwindling with monsoon continues to keep the overall development of the sector in the doldrums.

- Dr Hanish Kumar Sinha

In spite of the adversities and uncertainties, India ranks second in agricultural production, overtaking the USA, Russia and Brazil despite their elephantine land holdings. The food grain production which was about 50 million MT in 1950-51 has expanded over 6 folds to about 277 million MT in 2017-18 and is expanding at a decennial growth of 10 percent.

The demand for the warehousing sector has been on the continuous rise with a significant increase in overall food grain production. The total procurement by the government agencies comes to about 30 percent of the total production which totals about 104.25 million MT once the minimum buffer stock is added. The above calculation leaves about 173.24 million MT for the private and corporate entities which have a total warehousing capacity of about 72.82 million MT. We have considered the fact that as the Kharif season storage is being completed, the outgoing process is also proceeding for the already stored food grains simultaneously as per the industrial/retail demand and to incorporate that we have introduced the overlapping factor. The maximum food grain likely to be stored comes to about 89.57 million MT, which has been calculated based on the overlapping factor. Thus the final gap in the storage or the expected potential for expansion of agri-warehousing industry currently stands at 19.19 million MT.