National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation, the central government's procurement agency for non-cereal crops, is in talks with leading retail companies to serve as a back-end supply chain in agri-commodities.
The federation is in talks with retailers like RPG Spencer's and Subhiksha to supply agri-commodities for their retail operations.
"The organised retail in the country is witnessing an unprecedented boom. Since we have been engaged in procurement and marketing of various commodities for almost five decades, we feel there is a scope for us to form a supply chain in commodities like mustard oil, pulses, rice, vegetables, etc, that would cater to the retail companies," said Alok Ranjan, managing director, Nafed.
Organised retailers like Reliance Fresh, Spencer's and Subhiksha have not been able to do the entire sourcing of fruit and vegetables directly from the farmers and they are relying on commission agents in mandis to complete their requirements. This gives an agency like Nafed scope to step in with a supply chain and meet the rising demand of retailers.
"The talks with Nafed are preliminary. If the federation is competitive in terms of price and quality and can assure regular supplies, we will purchase from them. We are also making direct purchases in centres like Nasik," said G Kashinath, president (sourcing), Subhiksha. Nafed is a central government agency engaged in procurement, processing, distribution, export and import of various agricultural commodities.
The federation is also the central nodal agency for undertaking price support operations in pulses and oilseeds and market intervention operations for other agricultural commodities like jute, cotton and copra.
While the federation has the experience in procurement of commodities like oilseeds, pulses, onion, etc from the domestic market, it has also been importing commodities like pulses and edible oils, commodities where the country has been witnessing shortages, to market it in the country.
In the current rabi procurement season, the federation also bought 350,000 tonnes wheat, including 200,000 tonnes on the Food Corporation of India's account for the latter's public distribution system requirements.
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