Sanjay Sethi

The first stop a new British officer used to make after stepping on to Indian soil was the Bombay branch of the Army and Navy store – the British Empire's outfitter of choice. Nowadays the grand Italianate building where it was located, splendidly restored, is once again a department store: the flagship of Tata Trent's Westside chain.

WET market traders are increasingly being squeezed out of business by the huge hypermarkets which are opening their fresh products sections earlier.

Many young housewives are opting to shop for their fresh products in the comfort of air-conditioned super stores, instead of getting their feet dirty on the wet and usually unkempt stinking walkways of wet markets.

May I request update on Global Tenders floated by Maharashtra State Agricultural Marketing Board/Department to set-up Terminal Markets at Mumbai, Nagpur and Nasik under Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Surat Agriculture Produce Market Committee (APMC) is planning to set up a modern terminal market in Kolkata, with an investment of around Rs.600 crore. The project will be funded through internal accruals.

Kavitha Srinivasa
The New Indian Express

How about replenishing yourself with an energy drink which blends the essence of pomegranate and cranberry juice? Not many know, but a low-cal variant made it to the market in April.

M.R. Subramani

For those concerned over higher pesticide residue levels in various food items, here is something to cheer about.

Indian grapes being exported to the European countries have got a clean chit.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, finds itself in a curious situation in India. Barred by government restrictions, it cannot directly operate as a retailer. As a result, the company's strategy has been to develop what Raj Jain, Wal-Mart India's president, calls a business-to-business wholesale cash-and-carry operation. In addition, Wal-Mart India is playing a leading role in helping develop modern supply chains in India. In an interview with India Knowledge@Wharton in Washington, D.C., at the 33rd annual meeting of the U.S. India Business Council, Jain spoke about Wal-Mart's operations and strategy in India.

middlemen often occupy the lions share
n farmers n consumers r left wd nothing
ds is true but wdout it its nt feaseble
its reqd it creates job opportunities

supply chain must be such that the fatty wholesalers shud nt get more than wt they desrve

BANGALORE: ITC has pushed the pause button on expansion of its rural and urban food and grocery retail formats — Choupal Sagar and Choupal Fresh. Slower pace of agriculture reforms has impacted the momentum of ITC’s agri retail rollout, as the company’s front-end retail plans are deeply integrated to the back-end, going up to the farm level.

Pl. give a fresh update on modern terminal market project in Chandigarh

Vinod Dhingra
Manager Cold Chain Solutions

Acme Cold Chain solutions Pvt. ltd
Chandigarh

9915713869

I'm educating small farmers of my village to follow best harvesting practices for manngo, so that a better price can be demanded from the market. my goal is to create the infrastucture in my village such that my farmers are integrated to the retail chain, eliminating middlemen

source:fnbnews.com
Some Indian fruits and vegetables have been banned in countries such as China, the US and Japan, while Russia has prohibited the entry of all such items due to hygienic and other reasons, the Lok Sabha was informed last week. While Russia has banned all fruits from India, China does not allow import of 14 fruits and vegetables, includinh guava, watermelons, musk melon, papayas, pomegranate and custard apple, industry and commerce minister Kamal Nath informed the House. The US does not allow import of pomegranate due to quarantine requirements and had banned mangoes till March 2007 due to the absence of phyto-sanitary protocol. Japan banned the import of mangoes and grapes due to the alleged presence of fruit flies and stone weevil, he said. Australia and New Zealand denied market access to Indian mangoes due to the presence of fruit flies and stone weevil. He, however, said the government had taken up the matter with the respective governments.

SOURCE: fnbnews.com
The Centre is planning to adopt a cluster approach to boost banana export from the country. Banana production in India has doubled in the past 20 years - the challenge will be to double it in the next ten years with emphasis on the low-productivity in states like Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Uttar Pradesh. In addition, only about 3-4% of banana production is processed presently.

The Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), the national standards body of India, has launched Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) Certification IS/ISO 22000:2005. International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has published ISO 22000:2005 - Food Safety Management Systems - requirements for any organisation in the food chain with a view to providing framework for internationally harmonised requirements for systematically managing safety in food supply chains. BIS has adopted this International Standard which integrates the principles of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system developed by Codex Alimentarius Commission and combines the HACCP plan with Prerequisite Programmes (PRPs) and is fully compatible with Quality Management Systems (QMS) as per ISO 9001: 2000.

Courtesy : Nidhi Sharma & Deepa Krishnan, TNN (The Economic Times)

The commodity market is expect to get a boost in ‘08 with the submission of the Abhijit Sen Committee report. The coming year could also prove to be its watershed year as new initiatives like the commodities and power online spot exchanges would bear fruits.

Courtesy : The Economic Times

There is no doubt that this year the prices of several critical food items (most notably cereals such as wheat, corn and rice) have hit abnormally high levels in international markets. If these prices remain at those high levels (wheat above $350/ tonne, rice above $325/tonne and corn above $170/tonne as on November 2007) and spread to domestic markets, it can have serious implications for poor in several countries including India.

The Government will extend a grant of Rs 10 crore for cold chain integration in the country along with subsidies to encourage private players to invest in the cold chain infrastructure. This was announced by minister of state for food processing industries Subodh Kant Sahai at the inaugural session of the two-day conference on supply chain and technology in retail organised by FICCI.

The Malda horticulture department would start regeneration programme of old mango trees along the highways to make farmers aware of cultivation methods from the first week of January.

The department officials have planned to hold such programmes on government lands. Initially, they have selected mango orchards around the Malda airport field in English Bazaar. Orchards on both sides of PWD roads and in Manikchak block office have also been selected for demonstrations.

Matiranga, a remote upazila of hilly Khagrachhari district, has planned massive cultivation of mushrooms to fight poverty with a slogan titled 'Safety through Development'. Sixty families of Matiranga, 90km off the port city, have started cultivating mushroom after receiving training in this regard at the local army zone headquarters. Having training on mushroom cultivation, they have harvested several batches of products to get financial support, at least to some extent, during the last two months.

Thanks to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), developed countries and aid giving agencies suddenly started taking special interest to help the agriculture sector of developing countries, including Pakistan. In this regard the latest example is the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) that is planning to give additional financial assistance to the horticulture sector of Pakistan. According to this agency the aid would help improve competitiveness of the Pakistani products and would make them more competitive in the international export market through increased financial and technical support of USAID.

The NCDEX Spot Exchange Ltd (NCDEX Spot), a wholly owned subsidiary of India's leading agriculture commodity futures exchange - the National Commodity & Derivative Exchange Ltd (NCDEX), has kicked off its operations by launching spot trading in sugar (S30 Grade) on a pilot basis in Maharashtra.

The Economic Times

Till the other day, Reliance Retail was faced with massive opposition from the trading community. In a dramatic shift, it has decided to turn into a trader itself. It is entering the food-trading business as part of a major restructuring of its food and grocery initiative. It has created two supply chains: one to trade commodities in the open market through mandi shops while the second one will supply to its Reliance Fresh outlets.

Tholen - Junami is a new apple variety born in Switzerland. This new variety is a cross of Ideared, Maigold and Elstar. All good properties of these varieties are brought together in Junami. Consumers like Junami because of its round shape, remarkable red color, fresh taste and crispy bite. Various taste investigations showed the popularity of Junami among consumers. Especially young consumers and consumers with children like Junami. "Junami is an apple with a relatively long shelf life. I am sure that Junami can become the new champion among the apples," says Marco de Keijzer of Marnifruit. Marnifruit is the exclusive exporter of Junami apples in The Netherlands. The Junami apples are primarily grown in The Netherlands. Only EurepGAP certificated growers located in the best production areas are allowed to produce Junami. At the moment, the most important export markets are the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia. Junami will be available again from January 2nd.

The Ministry of Food Processing Industries concerned with a number of food processing sectors such as grain processing, meat processing, poultry & egg processing, milk products, fish processing, fruit and vegetable processing, consumer food industries.

Think it over!!!!!!

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a Rupee 500 note.

In the room of 200, he asked, "Who would like this Rupee 500 note?".
Hands started going up. He said, "I am going to give this note to one of you but first let me do this."

i would like to know abt banana market in india and how they r using modern technology in ther processing units and wht type of market in india and wht percentage of industries in india and sir give me detail of banana industry in india .

source : www.smeda.org.pk

Training Program in Pakistan
Course Title
Tunnel farming for the production of high value crops

Objectives / Description
The objective of this training is to educate the farmers and land loads about modern technique of cultivating off-season crops in a controlled environment. The controlled and enriched environment of Tunnel/green house also optimizes the production yield.

• A Terminal Market has been proposed on the lines of 'Modern Market for Millennium for fruits and vegetables- a report presented to the Government of India by the NDDB (in 1999). It is designed to cater to around 30 % fruits and vegetable needs of Mumbai city.

New Delhi, Aug 26 The government has decided to set up seven modern terminal Markets in Punjab, Haryana, Chandigarh and Madhya Pradesh in the next year under public-private partnership (PPP). The first terminal market will be set up in Chandigarh.