Speaking on "Agri business - a global perspective" here at the first day of the four-day meet, Agro-Advantage Maharashtra Global Investors's Convention, Greenberg said that the obvious challenge for India was to raise its food production to adequately feed its growing population. Currently India rates relatively low in a number of areas as far as inputs and technology were concerned. "To meet the challenges of a growing population, India will have to substantially improve its inputs to raise yields and reduce inefficiency andwaste.

Greenberg said that to achieve productivity increases, more efficient use of the land has to be made by multi-cropping and inter-cropping and added that increased application of irrigation and high yielding variety seeds will lessen the influence of the monsoon and help to stabilise production.

Storage, handling and transportation facilities need to be improved which would help to significantly reduce loss of harvested crops. Greenberg said that a lot of investment would be required to integrate entire food value chains to bring about use of better seeds, farming and techniques and improvement in the distribution network. He reiterated the need for government's active participation in encouraging large-scale private investments in milk and dairy products, meat processing, fish and poultry products.

He said the absence of a strongly developed compounded feed industry, India was more than self-sufficient on meals and exports virtually all of its soyabean meal and a considerable share of rapeseedmeal to other Asian countries. In case of sugar, India which was the largest consumer of sugar and second largest producer, has everything to gain by a continuous improvement of efficiency of production and decreasing costs per unit thereby satisfying increasing domestic demand and alleviating import pressure.

India has tremendous potential to become a major low-cost supplier of cotton in the world. He added that despite large area under cotton cultivation, India ranks third on the list of global producers after China and the US.State revenue minister Narayan Rane said that the Agro-Advantage was an exercise to bring the farmers and investors together. He said Maharashtra which has been endowed with diverse agro climatic conditions and progressive farmers has strong cooperative movements.

Rane said that the state was leading producer of cotton, sugarcane, onions, grapes, mangoes, bananas, oranges, pomogranate and cut flowers. Almost 90 per cent of the mango exports take place from Maharashtra and seedlessgrapes have also carved out a unique place for itself in European markets.He said that with the largest cow milk production in the country and liberalisation, Maharashtra offers great opportunities in dairy development sector. He informed that 60 per cent of the country's export of meat and meat products was from Maharashtra and it holds premier position in polutry sector.