Code No: S062 Price: 1300 Category: Foods & Agriculture: Herbal & Natural Products and Floriculture

Year of Publication : 2001

Table Of Contents : : Introduction: Background, Scope and Objectives of the Study, Importance of the Study, Methodology and Limitations, Presentation of the Report; Executive Summary; Present Status: Global Production and Trade, Indian Production and Trade, International Prices, Value Chain of Indian Products, Problems and Issues; Vision for the Future: International Trade, Domestic Market, India’s share in International Market, SWOT Analysis for Floriculture in India, Challenges Ahead; Repositioning the Industry: Policy Change, Locations, Scale of Production, Establishing Linkages, Market Development

Price : Rs1300/-

Category : Foods & Agriculture: Herbal & Natural Products and Floriculture

 Floriculture: Current Status, Vision and Action Plan

Floriculture Activity, defined for the purpose of this report as consisting of Cut Flowers cultivated under controlled conditions mainly for export, is growing in the world at around 6-10 per cent per annum.
This is supported by the demand in the developed countries of Europe, America, Australia, Japan and Singapore. The climatic condition in most of these countries does not favor year around cultivation of these flowers and many of them import flowers from other countries.

The major importing countries of Cut Flowers are Netherlands, USA, Germany, France, UK, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.
The major exporting countries include Netherlands, Columbia, Ecuador, Israel, Spain and Kenya.
Being a major market for floriculture, Netherlands both imports and re-exports the flowers. The most important flower traded in the international market is still Rose; however, others like Chrysanthemum, Carnation, Gerbera, Dahlia, Poinsettia, Orchids, Lily etc. are also marketed in large quantities in these countries.

In spite of a long tradition of Agriculture and Floriculture, India’s share in the international market for these flowers is negligible.
During the last ten years, taking advantage of the incentives offered by the Government, a number of Floriculture units were established in India for producing and exporting flowers to the developed countries.
Most of them were located near Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi and obtained the technical know-how from Dutch and Israeli Consultants. Almost all of them were capital intensive and made large investments in greenhouse and other infrastructure. Several of them are at present non-working.
The major reasons for their failure were lack of experience, inadequate research support, inadequate market knowledge and infrastructural and procedural problems.

Those who have survived the initial difficulties and are working, have increased the export of Floricultural products of India and enabled the country to become, although still small, an important player in the world market.
They have also diversified their exports and, besides Europe, have reached to the countries of Singapore, Japan and Australia. Moreover, there is also an increasing tendency of the Indian growers to directly send flowers to the European countries rather than through Netherlands. In spite of this achievement, the present health of the floriculture units is not exactly sound and many of them are facing both routine problems as also long term financial and marketing difficulties.

To enable these units to function more efficiently and competitively and to increase the volume of India’s exports, it is necessary to orient this activity entirely from a new angle.
The first and theforemost policy change dictated by the past experience is to treat the entire floriculture activity, whether it is catering to local demand or to the international demand, as an agricultural activity and not as an industry.
The only difference between Agriculture and Floriculture is that the latter uses high technology like poly-houses and refrigeration.
But quite soon, the technological inputs in the entire Agricultural activities will have to be upgraded and modernized on more scientific lines. By declaring Floriculture as Agriculture, we will not only take a logical step, but also we will ensure it certain benefits like income tax relief and will free the growers from many procedural hassles and unnecessary regulatory provisions.
The second most important step will be to encourage a "consortium" approach among the units for branding, grading, packaging, transporting, quality control, supply assurance, market development, market promotion, and research and development.
For this purpose, it is necessary to encourage some of the successful and experienced entrepreneurs to take a lead in forming such consortia.
They can also develop satellite farms and operate the existing closed or semi-closed units with a suitable waiver or postponement of their liabilities.
This would also necessitate the relief from Land Ceilings Act.

The other measures include more focussed attention on the locations near Mumbai, Bangalore infrastructure (which is extremely critical for Floriculture)reduction in air freight charges, reduction in interest rates by Banking institutions, waiver of excise duties on domestic sales and very focussed research on key areas. Training and manpower development is also another important area, which will and Chennai airports, encouraging establishment of viable units of around 7-15 Ha, a very close linkage between governments, research institutions and flower growers, assistance for market development, provision of assume criticality in future. The use of information technology and, particularly, Internet for trading should also be promoted.