A Project in Slow Motion

Context: For Operation Green to deliver, the experience of Operation Flood can prove beneficial.

Background: In Budget 2021-22, Government has announced expansion of the Operation Greens scheme to include 22 more commodities, reflecting its intentions of creating more efficient value chains for perishables.

About Operation Greens (OG) (launched in 2018):

• Objectives:
  1. To contain price volatility: in three vegetables(Tomato, Onions, and Potatoes (TOP), through the intervention of the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED).
  2. Building efficient value chains: to give a larger share of the consumers’ rupee to the farmers
     • Provides grant-in-aid (50% (up to Rs. 50 crore/project), 70% for Farmer Producer Organisation)
  3. Reducing the post-harvest losses: by building modern warehouses and cold storages.
     • Implementation: supervised by a Joint Secretary, Ministry of Food Processing Industries (MoFPI) and Programme management agencies (invited by MoFPI) to see its implementation.
• Challenges:
  • Low disbursal of grants: due to payment of subsidy on a reimbursement basis: Led to low (just Rs. 8.45 crore till Feb 2021)
  • High price volatility and low share of farmers’ share in consumers’ rupee (26.6% for potatoes, 29.1% for onions, and 32.4% for tomatoes).

Performance of Operation Flood (OF):

• High farmers’ share: almost 75-80% of what consumers’ pay in cooperatives like AMUL.
• India is the largest milk producer in the world: almost 200 million tonnes of production.

1. Ensure autonomy from the Government: by creating a separate board on the lines of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) for milk.
2. Ensure competent and committed leadership: like one provided by Verghese Kurien.
3. Quantifiable and transparent criteria for choosing clusters: to avoid inclusion/exclusion error.
   • E.g. Nalanda in Bihar was included in the onion cluster, but Aurangabad district in Maharashtra (an important white onion growing region) was left out.
4. Developing innovative subsidy schemes with new generation entrepreneurs, start-ups and FPOs.
   • Fast implementation of creation of 10,000 FPOs, Agriculture Infrastructure Fund and farm laws.