Public private partnerships for agricultural value chain and infrastructure development

The agriculture produce landscape is undergoing a significant and rapid change led by changing consumer demand preferences, increasing concern for food safety, traceability and assured yearround availability of quality agri produce at reasonable prices at the top of the supply chain. The experience world over has demonstrated that strong agri infrastructure at different levels of Agri value chain is key to a vibrant and competitive agriculture and agro industrial sector. Poor access to infrastructure for handing agricultural produce is one of the biggest impediments to growth of agriculture sector. Public Private Partnerships could be a useful tool to accelerate development in various areas of agribusiness and infrastructure. The present paper discusses the various benefi ts and models of PPP applicable to Agriculture and Agribusiness. The paper discusses the examples of such PPP initiatives in India at various levels of Agri value chain such as crop diversifi cation, farmer group formation, marketing Infrastructure, contract farming and provision of Agricultural services etc. With a renewed commitment of government to investment in rural infrastructure and an emerging market for global trade as well as experimentation with new forms of infrastructurefinancing and contracting, there are real opportunities to broaden the role of the private sector in infrastructure for agricultural development through PPP models.