‘DeHaat’, an AgriTech platform said that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Coca Cola India to work with more than 50,000 litchi growers in east India. It further said that with this venture litchi farmers will be given complete end to end support right from setting up demo orchards to reviving existing ones and creating transparent supply chain for the fruit.
DeHaat plans to GeoTag the orchards to bring transparency in the value chain that will help them connect with farmers and buyers.
Co-founder and CEO of DeHaat Mr. Shashank Kumar, said that this tie up will help them to reach out to more growers and specifically litchi farmers. He said, "We believe in offering complete end to end agricultural value chain services to cultivators to ensure they get technology and at the same time remunerative prices".
At present, the company is working with over 150,000 farmers growing crops like wheat, corn, banana, chilli & makhana in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha. It intends to reach 0.6 million growers through its franchise network of 1400 DeHaat micro-entrepreneurs.
Vice President of fruit circular economy, Coca-Cola India Mr. Asim Parekh said that it has aggressive plans for various fruits such as apple, litchi, grapes and oranges. He said, "Taking into account low productivity per acre of these fruits in India, we believe in long term investment for the growers to show the advance production technology such as ultra density plantation, better orchard management & micro irrigation”.
It must be noted that Coca Cola has already invested in oranges, apples and grapes value chain and now has ventured into litchi.
Parekh said, "Our Unnati program intends to help farmers with right technical & extension support to maximize the yield and income".
Adarsh Srivastav, a promoter of DeHaat who heads fruits & vegetables told that litchi is a high value crop for growers in Bihar and West Bengal.
He said, "In the last 6 years we have been seeing the declining output & quality of fruits because of knowledge gap of right orchard management & uncertain climatic condition. There was a time when Bihar used to produce more than 70 percent litchi of country which has now been reduced to 50 percent in mere 4 to 5 years". He added that for the program they will set up demo orchards for local farmers.
