Food is the crowning need & commercializing agriculture is in demand. Inadequate production and uneven distribution of food has lately become a high priority global concern. Agriculture has long been seen as a sector with tremendous potential in India. In the last few years, this sector has seen an unprecedented gain with several government and private sector initiatives.
This, coupled with changing global norms such as the WTO rulings and increased global competitiveness, invites a tremendous need for professional courses in Agribusiness Management, and makes it one of the most challenging and exciting sectors to be in.
The challenges one typically faces in the agriculture sector are the inadequate use of technology, the small average size of land holdings, poor socio-economic condition of farmers, dependence of agriculture on weather, poorly maintained irrigation systems, poor roads hampering the farmers’ access to markets, rudimentary market infrastructure, excessive regulation, etc.
Although agriculture contributes only 21% of India’s GDP, its importance in the country’s economic, social, and political fabric goes well beyond this indicator. The rural areas are still the home to about 72% of the India’s 1.1 billion people, a large number of whom are poor. Most of the rural poor depend on rain-fed agriculture and fragile forests for their livelihoods.
The sharp rise in food grain production during India’s Green Revolution of the 1970s enabled the country to achieve self-sufficiency in food grains and stave off the threat of famine. Agricultural intensification in the 1970s to 1980s saw an increased demand for rural labor that raised rural wages and, together with declining food prices, reduced rural poverty. Sustained although very slowly, the agricultural growth in the 90s has reduced rural poverty to 26.3% by the year 2000. Since then, however, the slowdown in agricultural growth has become a major cause of concern.
To overcome all these challenges agriculture business management is need of the day.
In developing countries like India, agri-business management with forward and backward linkages consists of major sectors such as agricultural input, agricultural production, agricultural processing– manufacturing & agricultural marketing sector.
Agribusiness management includes many aspects of the economy: Agricultural producers, businesses that provide supplies and services to the producers, businesses that add value to agricultural products, and those that facilitate the marketing of agricultural products to an ever-growing marketplace. Agribusiness Management broadly covers marketing, (emphasis on rural marketing) finance (emphasis on micro finance, commodity trading and lending) supply chain management, and taxation. It also details all the relevant and applicable fields of Agriculture and WTO, Agri export-import and agricultural finance. Agri-business explores production, marketing and trading of products related to agriculture and critical management issues such as financing and technical assistance, preparation of products for exports, overseas marketing issues and government policy.
A field as vast and primary as agriculture has its own territory of prospects. An MBA degree will help you reap profitable outcomes.
Contribution made by Megha Panchakshari MBA Agri-Business (Batch 2013-15)