India is expected to become the world’s third largest economy by 2050. A free trade deal now would have major implications for Canadian farmers.
Western Producer reporter Mary MacArthur explores what could become one of Canada’s largest trading partners. Check out her blog here.
SANGHOL, India – Grain buyer Parmjit Singh doesn’t stray far from his office during the busy rice harvest season.
Farmers fill their wagons with rice every day and haul it to Singh or one of 14 other grain buyers who operate out of a type of strip mall beside the busy highway between Chandrigarh and Ludhiana.
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More than 60 percent of India’s 1.1 billion people are involved in farming. Farmers in Singh’s region of the Punjab in northern India deliver about 500 quintals (100 kilograms) of rice to his store each day.
The rice piled on the ground in front of his store is 443 Pusa, a modern variety developed by the International Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi.
It is then resold, most often to the Indian government.
This year the government paid $23 per 100 kg, the minimum floor price for rice established by the government. Singh is always looking for buyers who pay more than the government price, but they are rare.
Singh buys 1.5 million kg of rice a year at his storefront office.
The rice is bagged into burlap sacks after it is sold and hauled to a nearby mill, rebagged into heavy poly bags and sent to storage and distribution.
It’s more labour intensive than the grain system in Canada, but India’s small one to two acre farms are productive, making India the third largest producer of grain in the world.
A lack of infrastructure to store the grain means more than one-third of the crop rots or is infested with rats and insects.
It’s estimated India would need to import little food if it had proper storage facilities, and could become an agricultural powerhouse in the process.
Until then, Singh will throw a tarp over the grain if it rains and continue buying rice from local farmers the way he’s always done.
