INDIAN SEED INDUSTRY- SMALL SNAPSHOT

INDIAN SEED INDUSTRY- SMALL SNAPSHOT

Planting material is the important & foremost requirements in the business of farming. In case of vegetables and cereals it is the seed which is used as the planting material. In recent past the liberalization in the seed policy has helped the Indian seed industry enormously. Hundreds of multinational companies are pushing hard in R & D and business development in India. Quality of the seeds has also improved fast & today our farmers are using high yielding world class seeds.

The demand of vegetables and fruits has increased drastically with the increase of population and it dragged the attention of the farmers near large cities. It is seen that the farmer has completely shifted from the cereals to vegetable in surroundings around tier 1 & 2 cities. The growing of vegetables has left positive influence on the socio economic condition of the farmers.

Snapshot to Indian seed Industry

Both public sector & private sector is involved in the R & D, Production, processing and sales of the seed in India. Nationals seed corporation (NSC), State Seed Corporation and state Agriculture Universities represents the public sector seed business. Apart from that there are state seed certification agencies and seed testing laboratories which keeps their eyes on the quality of the seed. The public sector is mainly dominated in cereal seeds.

Bayer Crop Science (Monsanto, Nunhems) Syngenta, Fito, Known You are some the multinational players which are leaving their positive impact on Indian seed industry. Indian is the 5th largest consumer of the seed accounting around 5% of the global seed market. Indian seed industry is growing by the pace of 15% and the Indian vegetable seed industry is growing by 12% YOY.

Indian Vegetable seed industry- Affecting factors

Increasing Demand- We are the second most populated country in the world and to feed the increasing population our farmers doubled the production of the vegetables in last 25 yrs. The business of vegetables is almost equal or exceeded the business of grains. Currently India is one of the largest producers of vegetable next to China.
Agro climatic Conditions- India is blessed with the variety of climatic conditions ranging from tropical to temperate. The situation makes possible the production of the seed to the production vegetable & we can grow almost all vegetable, fruits & grains.

Availability of farm labour- Indian seed industry is still not fully mechanized & required a lot of labour to perform day to day farm operations. Pollination for the hybrid seed production is the most labor intensive work. India being the most populated country has good supply of the affordable human resources which can be used has the farm labour. Looking at the affordable farm labour the multinational companies are taking huge seed productions from India.

Large Indian market- Since vegetable growing is the business of high margins hence it is attracting more and more farmers year on year. This is creating a high demand of vegetable seeds.