German chemicals major BASF is looking at expanding its Samruddhi programme to cash crops after tasting success with soybean in the food crops segment.
Samruddhi, started in 2007, is the company’s initiative to educate farmers about various crop protection measures.
BASF will also diversify with the scheme into other food crops such as potatoes, chilli, guar beans and groundnuts.
Though the company did not mention which cash crops it will be targeting and by when, Prasad Chandran, chairman and managing director, BASF India, said, “For BASF, Samruddhi represents a way of expanding business activities - moving from a focus mainly on cash crops to crops used in domestic markets and grown by small farmers.”
He said BASF has already played a major role in the development and expansion of this market. “In India, there is a big opportunity to increase the yield of soybeans and our goal is of enhancing overall soybean productivity, yield of farmers and business of BASF in India,” he said.
Under the Samruddhi scheme, which comes under its agricultural solutions division, BASF India conducted a pilot project with 30,000 soybean farmers in Madhya Pradesh wherein the company educated farmers in various activities such as fertilisation, seed rates, use of proper crop protection chemicals and agricultural practices.
The project boosted company’s sale of crop protection products and hence the scheme was expanded to other states as well.
“The project covered soybean cropped areas spreading across Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh between 2007 and 2010,” said Chandran.
During a recent presentation, company officials said BASF gained 60% in annual growth in business due to the Samruddhi scheme. The company’s revenues rose from 37 million euros (`208 crore) to 91 million euros (`512 crore) in crop protection from 2006 to 2009.
BASF had sales of Rs1,394 crore in the fiscal 2010.
“Agricultural solutions segment contributed 35% to the sales of BASF India for the last fiscal,” he said, declining to comment on the targeted sales for the current year and the acreage that the company will cover under soybean.
Currently, India has around 9.6 million hectares under soybean cultivation and approximately three million farmers in 50,000 villages.
BASF India has targets to expand ‘Samruddhi’ to 300,000 farmers by 2011 from 170,000 farmers in 2010. It will also add new practices such as spray support and AgCelene and will expand the scheme to food crops such as potatoes, chilli, guar beans, tomatoes, onion and groundnuts, apart from focusing on cash crops.
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