This book examines the performance of organized retail chains supplying the agri-input and output services in terms of achieving their objective of utilising collective bargaining power in the marketing of their agricultural produce, integrating empirical experience from India and other selected developing countries. The scenario of marketing for agricultural products has been undergoing rapid changes with the rise of organised retailing (the Indian term for ‘supermarkets’), a process that is likely to accelerate in years to come, with India being on the threshold of a supermarket revolution. In fact, India is referred to as the ‘final frontier’ in the development of supermarkets. The growth of supermarkets in India is faster than that in China, which is also witnessing an exponential growth as part of the “third wave” of supermarket diffusion. The book investigates the links between organised retailing and farmers and farming in India. Apart from raising issues of equity, inclusion and problems in policy framework, it also discusses policy interventions that are essential in order to make the development of organised retailing more inclusive and beneficial to the farming community and agricultural sector. The book further serves as a guide for policy makers, helping them to select the right kind of interventions to balance growth with equity as market forces penetrate deeper into the agricultural marketing space.

Supply Chain is the core business process in an organization that create and deliver a product or service, from concept through development and manufacturing or conversion, and into a market for consumption. Supply chain objectives include cost reduction, value addition and reducing response time in profit-based organisations in contrast to the non-profit based where issues like quality of life, equal opportunity, literacy rate, etc. are the priority area. In the international market, it helps business organisations to provide customer value, coordination, information sharing to stakeholders and societal value in the educational supply chain with feasible relationships internally as well as externally. Better outsourcing, enhanced profits, customer satisfaction, quality outcomes, competitive pressure, e-commerce application, globalisation, efficient operation and increasing complicity factors require supply chain management. Transparency is recognised as the key principle of public procurement policy but governments do not make public procurement data public. Public procurement laws may say what information to publish but not how to publish it. Governments may have new procurement laws and e-procurement systems, but they do not have accessible public procurement data and that is why they do not make it public. E-procurement systems are difficult to use and require a lot of user training. E-procurement reforms are frequently unsuccessful and challenging. Role of Information Technology in Supply Chain Management It contributes to restructuring the entire distribution set up to reduce inventory costs and achieve higher service levels. It reduces lead time, monitors transactions and stock levels. It helps to maintain a better stockholder relationship and gain a competitive advantage and market sustainability. The flow of products, information between the chain actors and coordinating activities to manage the supply chain is ensured by IT.

This book is a compendium of papers presented in the ‘International Conference on Emerging Global Economic Situation: Impact on Trade and Agribusiness in India’. The book is structured in four parts with thirty four papers. The first part discusses the aspects related to Crop Production and Agriculture Growth, while second part highlights the issues related to Agriculture Marketing and Prices in India. The third part of book presents the important issues related to Credit Income Insurance in India and last part presents innovation and Factors Influencing Sector. This book will be very useful for all those who are interested in issues related to growth of agriculture and allied sectors in our country.

From a country plagued with chronic food shortage, the Green Revolution turned India into a food-grain self-sufficient nation within the decade of 1968-1978. By contrast, the decade of 1995-2005 witnessed a spate in suicides among farmers in many parts of the country. These tragic incidents were symptomatic of the severe stress and strain that the agriculture sector had meanwhile accumulated. The book recounts how the high achievements of the Green Revolution had overgrown to a state of this ‘agrarian crisis’. In the process, it also brings to fore the underlying resilience and innovativeness in the sector which enabled it not just to survive through the crisis but to evolve and revive out of it. The need of the hour is to create an environment that will enable the sector to acquire the robustness to contend with the challenges of lifting levels of farm income and coping with Climate Change. To this end, a multi-pronged intervention strategy has been suggested. Reviving public investment in irrigation, tuning agrarian institutions to the changed context, strengthening of market institution for better farm-market linkage and financial access of farmers, and preparing the ground for ushering in technological innovations should form the major components of this policy paradigm.

This book provides the interplay between digital transformation, industry 4.0 technologies, and sustainable supply chain performance. The book mainly focuses on presenting case studies and empirical studies demonstrating how the industry 4.0 technologies interact with the conventional manufacturing practices such as lean manufacturing, circular economy practices, total quality management, and maintenance management, while achieving enhanced sustainable supply chain performance. The book guides the practitioners to consider the status of conventional supply chains in their organisations while designing industry 4.0 systems. This book is a useful resource for researchers and academicians to understand the interplay between existing technologies, industry 4.0 technologies, and sustainable performance in the digital transformation journey.

The agribusiness supply chain includes a number of processes such as supply management, production management, and demand management to customers through a competitive distribution channel. Each step of the way can be plagued with issues such as diversity of production and demand, bulkiness of produce, perishability, and seasonality. Highlighting t

We all are indebted to nature for providing us food and its resources for our subsistence and survival. In the food domain, cereal and legume grains occupy the front line, whereas, horticultural crops have occupied the second line of defense. For healthy diet cereals and legumes provide us with carbohydrates and protein, whereas, fruits and vegetables provide us minerals and vitamins. Both macro- and micro- nutrients are essential for human growth and development. The fruits and vegetables are the major source of micro-nutrients. It is estimated that up to 2.7 million lives could potentially be saved each year if fruit and vegetable production was sufficiently increased. Both at national and international levels, food and agriculture/horticulture development plans and estimates are basically developed, framed and implemented, and narrowed down to cereal production. In the present context of attaining nutrition security, this mode of thinking on ‘food’ needs to be changed to ‘nutrients’, which will include necessarily all those crops including fruit and vegetables which provide all macro- and micro-nutrients to ensure balanced nutrition needed for good human health. The present publication has attempted to reflect and discuss the above views and ideas on the subject of sustainable horticulture development and nutrition security in nine chapters with 32 articles by 32 authors.