Chennai: Samunnati Agro Solutions Private Limited, one of the prominent agri enterprises in India, joins hands with Germany-based GLOBALG.A.P., the leading body for setting global standards for agricultural produce particularly, on food safety and quality. Samunnati and GLOBALG.A.P. together aim to collaborate in developing standards for crops such as cereals, pulses, and oilseeds that are important for the nation.
The GLOBALG.A.P. protocols are used as benchmarks for enabling international trade in agri commodities and are widely used by many of the biggest companies involved in cross-border trading of agricultural produce. By joining the GLOBALG.A.P network as an Associate Community Member, Samunnati is keen to support development of standards for major staples such as cereals, pulses, and oilseeds, which are cultivated in large scale by hundreds of millions of farmers and are locally relevant. These crops are of strategic importance to India in the context of its AtmaNirbhar & Make in India ambitions for ensuring food and nutritional security and further augmenting its growing stature in the international agro commodity trade as a reliable producer of safe and quality food complying with global standards.
This is in sync with Samunnati’s priorities to unlock the trillion-dollar plus potential of Indian agriculture through working with diverse stakeholders like FPOs, farmers, agribusiness companies, experts, and other ecosystem players. GLOBALG.A.P. will bring its global expertise in developing standards that are locally adaptable by the farmers especially, smallholders.
Anil Kumar S G, Founder & CEO, Samunnati, said, “We see this as an important step in the right direction to promote sustainable farming practices focusing on major crops that are valuable to the nation. By leveraging mutual synergies, Samunnati and GLOBALG.A.P. are keen to ensure adequate production of safe, nutritious, and good quality food both for the domestic consumers and export markets. By adopting GLOBALG.A.P. protocols, our homegrown food can comply with the global standards and will be able to access newer global markets. These protocols also help in enhancing productivity and improved resource use efficiency contributing towards sustainability. Here, FPOs can certainly play a big role in encouraging their member farmers to adopt the standards, which will help the farmer collectives explore remunerative markets including exports, through which value realization for the farmers is enhanced. Samunnati will explore all these opportunities keeping the smallholder farmers at the center.”
He further added that Samunnati firmly believes that it is a shared responsibility of every entity in the agri food value chain to ensure food that reaches the consumers is safe, of good quality and is produced sustainably. This requires concerted efforts and investments by various ecosystem stakeholders and partnerships particularly, for capacity building, technology transfer, and educating farmers on the need and benefits of adopting good agricultural practices (GAP) and Samunnati welcomes like-minded entities for collaboration for the ultimate benefit of the smallholder farmers.
