India sugar mills pause export deals in bet price will rise more
Sugar exporters in India are holding off signing any more export contracts, in a bet that global prices will rally further after bad weather damaged crops in top grower Brazil.
Raw sugar in New York would need to climb to 20.5 cents a pound to again attract mills from the western Maharashtra state and the southern region, Abinash Verma, director general of the Indian Sugar Mills Association, said by phone. The second-biggest sugar producer has already inked deals to ship 1.2 million tons from the next year’s crop, taking advantage of a recent rally in prices, he said.
A slower pace of sales by India, which is estimated to have almost 9 million tons in reserves next month, may heat up the global market again. Sugar futures recently reached a four-year high in New York after drought and frost hit Brazilian crops. The commodity traded at 20.04 cents a pound Wednesday.
Cargill launches ‘Digital Saathi’, a mobile first local online service platform
Cargill has launched ‘Digital Saathi’ – a mobile-first, artificial-intelligence (AI)- based local online service platform.
“Digital Saathi will provide digitally enabled agriculture advisory services and enhanced market access to smallholder farmers based in 5 districts of Karnataka including Davangere, Bellary, Haveri, Chitradurga and Shimoga. Small and marginal farmers will gain easy access to multiple stakeholder ssuch as peer farmers, Farmer Producing Companies, agri-suppliers, buyers, traders and processors,” said Cargill in a statement.
It added, “The farmer mobile app has already engaged with 6,000 registered small farmers and is projected to reach 30,000 farmers in Karnataka by May 2022. Cargill has set a global goal to provide training on sustainable agricultural practices and improve access to markets for 10 million farmers by 2030 and Digital Saathi is a step towards that direction. Through this hyper-localized service platform, Cargill aims to connect with over 3 million farmers in the next 5 years.”
MP ahead of other states in developing agriculture infrastructure: Tomar
Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar said that Madhya Pradesh is ahead of many other states in the country in developing infrastructure in the farm sector. He also said that out of the Rs 10,000 crore-worth proposals that the Centre has received under its ambitious Agriculture Infrastructure Fund scheme so far, MP’s proposals are worth Rs 1,000 crore.
Tomar said this while chairing a meeting at the state secretariat here with Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and state Agriculture Minister Kamal Patel on Thursday on agriculture-infrastructure and other issues.
“The works (carried out) in the agriculture sector in Madhya Pradesh are capable of changing the lives of farmers. These works are very commendable. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the Agriculture Infrastructure Fund for the development of agriculture infrastructure with a fund of Rs one lakh crore,” a public relation department official quoted Tomar as saying.
