It's a misconception that the Indian farmer is unwilling to pay: Simon Wiebusch of Bayer
The president of Bayer South Asia on how Indian farming has benefited from the use of better-quality inputs, on the uberisation of services and co-operative organisations that enhance productivity
Simon Wiebusch, President of Bayer South Asia. Photographed at Bayer House, Thane.
Image: Bajirao Pawar for Forbes India
Simon Wiebusch, the president of Bayer South Asia, heads three Indian businesses—Bayer Cropscience, which is a listed Rs 25,000 crore market cap company as well as the unlisted pharma and consumer health businesses. In an interview with Forbes India he talks about how Indian farmers have the potential to move up the value and productivity chain, why farm labour is likely to become scarcer and the seed as well as information solutions that the company is providing to farmers. Edited excerpts:
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Q. You’ve spoken about how agricultural yields in India are low, how there’s a lot of potential for mechanisation, etc. I’ve seen the various sort of seeds Bayer sells. But from an Indian farmer’s perspective, their life, at least the way I look at it, hasn’t really gotten that much easier in the last five to 10 years. What according to you are the biggest problems?
While India is calorie sufficient one sees that there are problems from time to time. For instance, you see the monsoon’s not behaving, etc and so all of a sudden we’re not exporting onions and we’re rethinking rice exports. So while we are barely calorie sufficient we’re completely under nurtured. If you want to be seeing 1.4 billion people move up that ladder, you need to ensure they get access to affordable, broad-based nutrition, which usually comes with a broader basket of food than simply rice and dal. Now, you can obviously add nutrients and say, okay, you take some vitamins, etc., you can do fortification. Fundamentally, in a country like this one, where we have the agricultural potential, you need to give more access to horticultural resources.
Q. Demographically, they (Indian farmers) are above 45. Their children are not going to go into farming. What does that tell you?
So we are seeing that the abundance of labour that we used to have available in agriculture is no longer there. The problem is threefold. First, the number of people who are willing to do farm labour. Second, the cost of that labour to the farmer and third the readiness of that labour to work hard. So, you’ll find a lot of farmers that will tell me, I am getting labour that is expensive and that guy is lazy.
