Agro-vet connecting markets
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Authors
Yasmin Gautam
Issue Date
16/11/2017
Type
Language
en
Keywords
Agriculture
Alternative Title
Abstract
It is not always necessary that successful business requires highly sophisticated products, big cities and difficult business models. Seed market system developed at a small village of Nawalparasi in Western Nepal can be taken as a good example. Rishi Veterinary Farm, a major component in this local market system is popular in the village as seed collection centre. Proprietor of Rishi Veterinary Farm, Dina Nath Dhakal has been able to expand his business from one small shutter to three shutters and two godowns. He saves NPR 50,000 (€ 407) monthly from the business. Along with other agricultural inputs, one major component of his daily business is forage seeds. He says that it is due to seed business that his customer base has increased drastically by 60 per cent and his profit has risen by more than 20 per cent. He still remembers the day when he had participated in a training program organised by Practical Action at Nawalparasi. Before attending that program also he used to buy few quintals of forage seeds from India and sell to handful of farmers, but those seeds imported from India used to be of low quality and high cost. But after attending the program, he received technical inputs regarding forage seed production, storage and marketing, and realised that forage seeds can be produced in the local community at much low cost and high quality. That was when Dhakal started sharing this information to anyone who came to his veterinary to purchase agricultural inputs. He mentions, “At first farmers were reluctant to switch to green forage from traditional crops, even though the conventional farming yielded them low return. But when they became aware of contribution of green forage on low cost of livestock feed, increased milk production, and additional income generating opportunity by seed multiplication, they were interested to enter the market system”. He also provides buy-back guarantee to the seed multipliers to encourage the farmers for seed multiplication. He knew about the buy-back agreement and its efficiency in creating sustainable market through the interaction meeting organised between seed companies, producer group, and agro-vets facilitated by Practical Action. Now almost every farmer sells 2-4 kg of seeds to him. The price of teosinte (summer season forage seed) has also declined to NPR 90 (€ 0.75) per kg from NPR 200 (€ 1.66). Local farmers in the village now buy source seeds at subsidised amount from Rishi Veterinary Farm, keep some forage plants as feed to livestock and sell the excess by multiplying seeds to the agro-vets. Agro-vet Dhakal then buys the seeds produced by the local seed multipliers and sells them to agro-vets from other districts and other farmers. With the operation of such effective local market system in the village, he no longer needs to order seeds from India because his demand is fully met by purchasing seeds from the local farmers. Last year, Dhakal bought 15 quintals of seeds, including 9 quintals of teosinte (summer season forage crop) from the local farmers. Dhakal says, “The number of farmers yielding green forage and keeping livestock in the area has increased by 50 per cent. Even the returnees from abroad come to me asking for suggestions about the green forage. Currently there are 11 returnees of abroad who purchase seeds from me. They profit more from green forage based livestock farming than they did from abroad.” Practical Action conducted five slots of Agrovet training in five districts in the first year and one slot of agrovet level refresher training on second year. Three interaction sessions on market management were also organized between local agro-vets, producer group and forage seed trading companies to build up confidence for forage seed production and trading between local market players to enhance possible forage seed production in the locality.
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All rights reserved
All rights reserved