TNAU under MNC's Headhunt radar
Even as there is opposition from several sections, including political parties, to the entry of MNCs into retail agricultural commodities’ business, the MNCs are into a head hunt for agriculture graduates to serve in the southern states.In the recently held campus recruitment programme at the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) Coimbatore, 16 agriculture graduates were selected and 200 shortlisted by MNCs such as Reliance, Aditya Birla Group and Heritage.It is for the first time these MNCs have come for recruitment in the university.According to M Thangaraju, director of students welfare, TNAU, ‘‘The companies are looking for 900 candidates for the southern states in the current year. So, they are expected to recruit more in the coming months.’’It had been stated that the companies would initially pay the under-graduate degree-holders around Rs 10,000 and the pay package would be increased to Rs 16,000 after six months. The PG-holders would initially get Rs 12,000 and Rs 18,000 after six months.The candidates were selected for categories such as production, quality control and marketing. Candidates holding agriculture with MBA degrees were preferred for marketing.
The MNCs would be encouraging contract farming and procure vegetables directly from the farmers. The newly recruited candidates would help them in the transfer of technology to the farmers.Agricultural experts said that the entry of MNCs would in fact benefit the farmers as the role of middlemen and commission agents would be eliminated as the companies would purchase the produce directly from the farmers. Meanwhile, with the vegetable prices in the domestic market remaining low, the farmers were asked to try the overseas market.‘‘The export potential of agricultural commodities, particularly to countries such as UAE, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, is still remaining untapped to a larger extent,’’ said Professor N Raveendran, Domestic and Export Market Intelligence Cell, functioning in the Centre for Agricultural and Rural Development Studies, TNAU.‘‘As of now, the link between the farmers and merchant exporters are very weak.
This has to be strengthened so that the agricultural commodities can be exported,’’ he added.Merchant exporters should come forward to have a direct link with the farmers through contract farming as being done with cotton and medicinal plants. A Coimbatore-based super spinning mill has successfully implemented the system in cotton. It has been also adopted in maize. Contract farming has been successful in sugarcane for the last 50 years, he pointed out.
