Showing posts with label Supply chain. Show all posts
A Greener Supply Chain to Promote Eco-friendly Products
Posted by Unknown in Ecology and Ecosystem, India, Supply chain, WWF on Monday, 13 May 2013
WWF’s green retail movement aims at promoting eco-friendly products and sustaining demand for the same
The
ever-growing human demand for resources is putting tremendous pressure
on biodiversity — threatening the continued provision of ecosystem
services, health and wellness of human beings.
To keep a check
on this pressure on environment, WWF has come out with a new model of
strategy — PPP (People, Planet and Profit). This model emphasises on
green retail across the globe, promoting green product lines and its
constant demand. Not only that, it is also finding new ways of
sustaining this green retail. For that, global demand for green lines,
WWF insists, is a must. This will result in triple gain: benefit people
as they will value products that don’t damage the environment; help the
planet to breathe better and facilitate (retail) supply chains to reap
profit in the process.
Ravi Singh,
CEO, WWF-India says “Human consumption is at a rate 50 per cent faster
than what the earth can sustain. Our ecological footprint has doubled in
the last 40 years and is on course to double again in the next 40. As a
whole the humanity extracted resources more than 52 per cent faster
than they could be regenerated eating into the existing stock of
forests, fisheries, grasslands, and other assets. Meanwhile the prices
for many of those assets have nearly doubled or tripled in the last 10
years according to World Bank Data.”
And therefore,
he adds, “WWF’s global green retailer movement will cover a wide
spectrum of issues from reducing energy, greenhouse gases, waste, and
chemicals, employee empowerment to innovation. However, the core focus
for the retail industry should be to ensure sustainable product lines
and sustainable supply chains.”
To make the PPP
model through the retail industry successful, WWF has recently been
able to pursue big supply chains of consumer products like Marks &
Spenser, Wal-Mart, IKEO, Carrefour to adopt proactive sustainability
agendas, particularly in establishing sustainable product lines across
their supply chains. Mr. Singh says, “Many retailers, as part of the
Consumer Goods Forum have even committed to taking deforestation out of
their supply chain and buying sustainable products, such as sustainable
palm oil, cotton, etc.”
Constant
efforts on promoting green retail in India including a seminar held in
Mumbai recently (titled Sustainability In Retail: A Triple Bottom-Line
Approach: as a part of Retail Leadership Summit-2013) show that efforts
are also being made by large companies to make a shift to more
sustainable supply chains due to increasing consumer awareness globally.
But promoting
this concept in India has its own share of issues. The general
perception is that the Indian consumers do not care much about product
sustainability unlike their U.S. and European counterparts. But the
latest green marketing techniques convey otherwise. For instance, says a
representative from WWF-India, “in 2008, the top-scoring consumers of
2010 were in the developing economies of India, Brazil, China, in
descending order. The survey results show that both cost considerations
and environmental concerns motivated consumers to adopt more
environmentally sustainable behaviour”.
New trends
indicate that global players are putting pressure on their supply chain,
which extends into developing countries like India and also their local
counterparts and partners. Retailers are evaluating their direct store,
distribution centre, and supply chain operations to uncover cost-saving
and workforce-enhancing opportunities.India has one of the largest
numbers of retail outlets in the world. The retail sector is
experiencing exponential growth, with retail development taking place
not just in major cities, but also in Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
Indian retail already contributes 10 percent of the GDP. So, it is
believed with big retailers/corporate houses initiating green retailing,
small retailers/shopkeepers will follow automatically.
Understanding the Food Supply Chain
Posted by Unknown in Agriculture and Farming, China, India, Supply chain on Sunday, 27 January 2013
Agriculture
policies of both India and China would have to cope with the dual
challenges of feeding the poor and meeting the rapidly growing needs of
the middle-class.
Both
China and India, despite their high growth rates, have deprived and
vulnerable populations that are susceptible to hunger. While the opening
up of the economy to ensure growth is a well established tradition,
there is less clarity on what should be the role of the State in
providing food and ensuring a functional food supply chain.
Reforms
that make agriculture more market-oriented require the replacement of
state institutions by more market-based pricing rules. While these new
rules might be helpful in reducing unnecessary costs on account of poor
administrative action, it would be foolish and short-sighted to entirely
dismantle state institutions in agriculture. The challenges of handling
the logistics and technological upgradation of the agricultural supply
chain are evident in China and India, though they have undertaken very
different policies with regard to food procurement and distribution.
DELIVERY MECHANISMS
The
Chinese state has devolved agricultural policy to the district level,
with district mayors often sub-contracting provision of food to poorer
sections to local government bodies. The move away from a central
financial control to a local state-funded system of development was part
of a national decision to move away ‘from maximising to minimising the
state' devised in the late 1990s. This has resulted in state agencies
losing their monopoly position in many areas of agricultural marketing
and processing. They are now required to cooperate with enterprises
outside the state sector, particularly with private sector players. The
localisation of agricultural distribution has led to large variations in
provision, with some districts having a far better track record than
others.
In
the case of India, public agricultural institutions dominate foodgrain
procurement and delivery. The intervention by the Indian state in
procurement through the minimum support price (MSP) is regarded as a
costly and inefficient operation. A manifestation of the squandering of
government funds is the manner in which the current procurement levels
of 60 million tonnes (mt) of grains is being managed. Only three-fourths
of this grain is held in storage with adequate cover, while the
remaining 15 mt lie relatively exposed to the elements and to pests.
In
India, there has been far more debate about the type of public
distribution system (PDS) – especially over the shift from a more
comprehensive universal PDS to the narrower version of the so-called
Targeted PDS in the late 1990s. On the other hand, there has been a
relative neglect of the mid-chain components of storage, as a result of
which the logistics of foodgrain movement have remained virtually
unchanged.
The
Food Security Act, sought to be introduced by the current Government
since 2009, has generated considerable debate, culminating in demands
for a fundamental restructuring of the final stage of the agricultural
supply chain, where food security should be a universal right. But this
content also provides a valuable opportunity for revisiting the various
capacity constraints in each section of the chain and the evaluation of
the cost implications of changing these constraints.
STATE INTERVENTION
The
size and effectiveness of delivery of foodgrains can be deduced from
the nature and reliability of the food supply chain. The hasty
dismantling of state institutions would not be conducive to bolstering
the capacity of the supply chain to improve procurement and delivery.
The success of bringing in the private sector is dependent of the
operation of a set of government regulations that would operate
throughout the chain to ensure minimum standards and technological
dynamism.
In
the case of China, a large part of procured grain stocks are being
diverted towards the creation of a processed foods sector to enhance the
production of meat and animal-based products. This will help to
diversify the Chinese agricultural product sub-sector that can be
subsequently procured through an expanded agricultural supply chain in
the future.
In
the case of India, the present-day agricultural reforms continue to
focus exclusively on procurement and distribution of foodgrains within
the framework of the existing agricultural food chain. There has been
very limited analysis of how technology can help improve processed food
or animal products that will increasingly become the major items of food
consumption by the growing middle classes.
Furthermore,
the importance of food standards and food safety is still relatively
unexplored in the food procurement policy of both India and China and
could prove a future threat to the food security of both countries.
RISING MIDDLE CLASS
The
continued importance of feeding the poor and the new challenge of
meeting the demands of a rapidly growing middle class will continue to
be a concern for national agricultural policy in both countries. The
difference is that India still has at least a third of its population in
poverty and public institutions are already stretched in trying to
ensure food reaches this vulnerable sector.
In
China's case, the high levels of industrial growth in the reform period
were able to reduce poverty levels by half. The use of the largesse of
industrial growth to provide transfers for the poorer sections of rural
China was a smaller task.
The
challenge ahead for both countries is how they use the agricultural
supply chain to deal with the already evident problems of uneven
coverage in different districts in each nation, and how they move
forward to ensure more and better quality food.
Need to Develop Farm Supply Chain Stressed
Posted by Unknown in Agriculture and Farming, Pakistan, Supply chain on Friday, 25 January 2013
 |
| A Typical Agricultural Supply Chain |
Secretary
Commerce Zafar Mahmood has stressed upon the need for developing supply
chain of value-added farm goods to bring about quantum jump in exports.
He said Pakistan had only managed to develop supply chain for cotton
crop, but neglected all other agriculture produces.
Speaking
to a panel of Dawn here on Monday, he said that there exists big scope
for going into value-addition of a large number of farm produces such as
mangoes, kinno, dates, dairy products, vegetables, fish, byproducts of
rice and wheat etc., but needs some motivation and patronage of federal
and provincial governments.
He
said project financing would be needed to introduce technology in
value-addition chain of different farm produce and this could only be
possible once there is a focused approach and investors are given proper
guidance and assistance at all stages and levels.
“It
is not a rocket science but only needs dedication from private sector
which could bring in investment and required technology but without the
government patronage this task could not be achieved,” he maintained.
There
is a greater need, he said, to develop farm to market place of a supply
chain and logistics if a success has to be achieved in value-addition
of farm produce. He said the only way out was to concentrate on
value-addition of existing exports because presently barring textiles
most of exports were of semi-raw materials or were of low cost
value-addition.
Most
of the farm produces are being exported at a low cost simply because of
poor standard and secondly due to lack of knowledge about global
requirement for different type of treatments — vapour or hot water — and
sanitary standards needed for fresh fruits and vegetables.
“Once
awareness is created and required facilities are developed the country
could easily multiply its exports and earning of farmers within a short
period,” he added.
Responding
to a question, he agreed that such facilities should be developed
around Karachi because all goods have to pass through the city for
exports. “Pakistan needs to focus on high yielding markets but for this
our exporters have to meet their specifications starting from
procurement, grading, processing and packing.”
After
European Union imposed ban on fish imports from Pakistan on account of
poor hygienic conditions of processing units, he said, all of our fish
catch is now being exported to Vietnam from where after value-addition
it is being exported to EU member states.
The
secretary commerce said Pakistan would have to put lot of efforts in
controlling contamination in its agriculture produce including cotton,
fruits and vegetables and should ensure that it could follow world
standards. Some countries, he said, even seek traceability of fresh
fruits starting from orchard tree.He further said that logistics was yet
another important link in the entire value chain of fresh fruits and
vegetables and that would also need lot of investment and know-how.
There
would be a need for establishing cold chain starting from farm to point
of export which means that cold storage facilities will have to be
developed across the country and goods in transit will also have to be
transported through reefer containers.
In
short, he said, it is the quality and specification of fresh fruits and
vegetables which could fetch good price and make its place in the world
market.
The Dawn
