Devising Strategies for popularizing low cost greenhouse technology in India

Abstract

Green houses are a wide used phenomenon in the western countries, especially countries with cold climatic conditions. They create favorable climatic conditions for growing a number of vegetable crops and horticulture plants. The technology is advanced in the developed countries, using highly automated systems in the processes of cultivation, in a greenhouse.

However, the situation is quite different in developing countries like India, both technology wise and economic conditions wise. While low cost polyhouse technologies have evolved during the years, the technology and process have to evolve further to make the system an ultra low cost, to make it viable to the small and marginal farmers, even with the ongoing subsidies from different governments. As can be seen to date, most of the subsidies in the state of Gujarat for Polyhouse have been only utilized by big farmers with hundreds of acres of land. While this causes the net agricultural output to rise for the state, it clearly does not meet the aim for which most subsidies are created. The small and marginal farmers hardly get any share of this subsidy.

According to Mr. Paul Polak, founder of IDE, an organization that serves million of the world’s poor and yet remains profitable, there are three things that need to be taken care of to make an impact at the bottom of the pyramid. First, to create a technology that would cater to the need by drastically reducing the prices, Second to accept ultra low margins at mega scales. Third to create a last mile end to end supply chain that integrates the whole system, without creating any bottle necks or road blocks.

Drawing the spirit from IDE’s philosophy and the success of cooperatives like Amul, The first step is to create an ultra low cost polyhouse, at a very small scale, that would be feasible for a small or marginal farmer to set up and run. Next step would be to create the business models that would make the financing riskless to the farmer, to get his full support. Third would be to create institutions like SIMI, Nepal that would create an end to end supply chains and form a complete ecosystem of sustainability. The fourth would be to create a model to scale up this system to derive financial benefits and to create social externalities that would benefit the nation at large. Three things that need to be taken care are the technology, finance and knowledge transfer. As the saying goes that the chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a failure or lack of competency in any of the three fronts will not benefit the system as much as it is intended to As far as the policy goes, it should be the role of the govt. to subsidize the marginal farmer with

a better percentage than the large farmer. While increasing the overall production is an acceptable goal, the finances could be better used to increase the productivity through incentivizing the small and marginal farmer.