PRADEEP G. NAIR Koeleman India Koeleman's Nair sees a long-term advantage for India in an export crop like gherkin that involves a 30-day sow-to-harvest operation

Ankush Aggarwal is looking to charter an aircraft for a twice-a-week flight to London from Delhi. On board will be a cargo of baby corn, broccoli, snow peas, onion, chillies, okra, and yam from Punjab. Final destination: the fast-moving shelves of UK retailers such as Tesco and Sainsbury's. The quest may seem ambitious, but the 30-year-old chemical engineer is dead serious. Aggarwal has already shipped several consignments to Europe and is busy watching his Rs 20-crore dream, Punjab Agri Food Parks Ltd., come to life at Fateh Singh Garh, a nondescript village located 60 km away from Chandigarh. Also living this dream are farmers from remote villages in the Patiala district of the state: Kuljit Singh of Rai Manjira and Gurjit Singh of Chambala are two such. A large landholder with 52 acres, Gurjit has already committed nearly 10 acres to Aggarwal's food parks; he will grow baby corn, chillies, cabbages and tomatoes on this land. And Kuljit has dedicated 12 acres to the project. An year from now, Aggarwal hopes to export 40 tonnes of vegetables a day.

VIJAY SINGH Vijay Floriculture & Seeds Uttaranchal-based Singh's visits to Delhi's flower markets are likely to get less frequent as he shifts to growing oriental lilliums and carnations for exports

A success story is slowly emerging in some of the country's 48 agri export zones (AEZs), a Rs 1,325-crore government initiative aimed at boosting exports. In AEZs across Uttaranchal, Punjab, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu, around 4,000-and-rising farmer-exporters have already started shipping their produce to international markets; others are drafting plans to export their next harvest; and some 32,000 farmers are currently being trained by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA). "There's now talk of taking us abroad to understand the nature of crop pattern," gushes Kuljit Singh. "That will be a valuable input."

The AEZs, founded in late 2001, have already exported agricultural produce-this includes gherkins, mangoes, vegetables and litchis-worth Rs 450 crore. That isn't such a big number. What is, is APEDA's projection that the AEZs will export over Rs 10,300 crore of agricultural produce by 2007. "You cannot judge the success of AEZs from the current export performance of these regions," says Ranjan Kedia, Managing Director, Radha Krishna Impex Private Ltd. "It's all about starting an export movement." Kedia moved to litchis from soyabean five years ago and boasts an export turnover of Rs 3 crore. He believes he has merely scratched the surface of a $100-billion (Rs 4,60,000 crore) international opportunity and has drawn up plans to diversify into other lucrative crops like exotic vegetables and mangoes.

DR. N. BARATHI Growmore Bio-Tech Hosur-based Growmore Bio-Tech has carved out a niche for itself by exporting tissue-cultured plants to Japan and Australia

That belief is echoed by Himmat Singh, Chairman, Punjab Agri Export Corporation Ltd., the nodal agency for AEZs in Punjab. "We have just made a start," he says. "Let the cold chain and quality facilities come in and you will see a major impetus." Adds K.S. Money, Chairman, APEDA, ''What we bring in is export focus and coordination that have been lacking in states so far.'' And so, the government has focused on creating an environment conducive to exports and changing the mindsets of farmers who have traditionally grown rice, wheat, and the occasional maize, barley, and mustard. The results are beginning to show. "Until now, there has been limited output available for exports and there are too many players. However, with the infrastructure facilities being set up in interior villages as part of the AEZ project, the output is bound to increase," says Piyush Shah, an aspiring fruit exporter based in Mumbai. Starting this month, Shah will export 150-180 tonnes of grapes every season to West Asia and Europe. Next summer, he plans to diversify into mangoes. Fruits are alright, but it is a vegetable rarely used in Indian cuisine that is the biggest export success story of them all.

RANJAN KEDIA Radha Krishna Impex Kedia's Radha Krishna Impex moved to litchis from soyabean five years ago and today boasts an export turnover of Rs 3 crore

The Coming Of The Gherkin

Satya Priya Mazumdar is a 53-year-old former Unilever pro who swears by gherkins. In 1992, an Italian friend of his was trying to source gherkins from a reliable source; he was looking for an alternative to his primary source, civil-war ravaged Sri Lanka. The gherkin-a mini-version of a cucumber-is not used in Indian cuisine; and it was never a part of Indian agricultural landscape. Mazumdar discovered that Karnataka's largely temperate climate suited the crop. Today, his Ken Agritech exports gherkins worth Rs 17 crore a year to the US, Europe, and Australia.

Circa 2003, some 30,000 farmers and 15,000 acres are involved in gherkin cultivation, all for export markets. "This is a 30-day sow-to-harvest kind of crop and is mainly grown by contract farmers," says Pradeep Nair, President of the Rs 10-crore Koeleman India Pvt. Ltd. "Given the agricultural labour costs and the small land holdings in India, we have a long-term advantage in gherkins." In 1999-2000, before an AEZ dedicated to the vegetable came up in Karnataka, 32,000 tonnes of gherkins worth Rs 23 crore were exported. By 2002-03, the figures had shot up to 60,000 tonnes and Rs 130 crore.

Karnataka is also scripting a success story in rose onion, a variety that lacks pungency and is popular in South-East Asia. Around 5,000 farmers in 10,000 acres grow this crop; in 2002-03, the Karnataka AEZ exported 26,000 tonnes of rose onion (value: Rs 50.9 crore) to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Brunei. And to think no one had even heard of rose onion in Karnataka till 1993!

ANKUSH AGGARWAL Punjab Agri Food Parks Aggarwal's Punjab Agri Food Parks has shipped several consignments to Europe. An year from now, it hopes to export 40 tonnes of vegetables a day

Agriculture To Floriculture

Ramnagar, at the foothills of the Kumaon range, is just a few minutes drive from the Corbett National Park. The town wears a busy look from November to June when the park is open for tourists who come hoping for a sighting of its most famous inhabitant, the tiger. But for two weeks in mid-June, Ramnagar is host to activity of a very different nature. Almost every able soul in Ramnagar spends these two weeks harvesting litchis, and then sorting, grading, and packing them off to wholesale markets in Delhi. Growers like Ravinder Singh Randhawa and Deepak Puri may do less of that now. Randhawa, who owns a 50-acre farm in Ramnagar, is yet to set foot outside the country, but has already exported around five tonnes of litchis to food retailers in Dubai, Bahrain, and the UK. "APEDA helped us gain a market entry," says Randhawa, "but to grow from here, we need to do our own marketing." And so, Randhawa, who has already set up a packing and processing facility at Ramnagar, will soon be making his first visit outside India.

SATYA PRIYA MAZUMDAR Ken Agritech Mazumdar discovered that Karnataka's climate was suited to growing gherkins. His Ken Agritech now exports gherkins worth Rs 17 crore a year to the US, Europe, and Australia

Floriculture is another segment that may benefit from the AEZ movement. Currently, India exports flowers worth $40 million (Rs 184 crore), which is just 0.1 per cent of the $40-billion (Rs 1,84,000 crore) global floriculture market. However, with traditional agriculturists moving into the cultivation of export-oriented flowers, this figure is expected to grow five-fold by 2010. Sudhir Chadha, 47, owns 55 acres in Nainital district, and he would rather be in the business of floriculture than grow traditional crops or get into the tourist resort business. Chadha has already exported 20,000 sticks of oriental lillium, an exotic flower, to Dubai and Holland; these fetch him Rs 50 a piece compared to Rs 35 in the domestic market. Chadha has his sight set on flowers like gerbera (its oil is used in perfumes and costs Rs 4,000 a kg) and carnations. In southern India, the Hosur-Dharmapuri belt on the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border is already riding the floriculture export wave. "We have the benefits of climate, the low cost of labour, and (the latest) technology," says a large flower exporter based in this area. Roses are the flower-of-choice in this region, and they go by exotic names such as Movie Star, Noblesse, and First Red. Exporters here are optimistic about their chance to strike it big. "Floriculture exports from India could grow to anything between Rs 10,000 crore and Rs 20,000 crore in the next 10 years," says one exporter. The largest player in this AEZ is CCL Flowers Ltd., which covers almost 40 per cent of the zone and produces 17 varieties of roses from 35 greenhouses. Indian roses are popular in West Asia, Japan, and Europe, but "the entry of China into the market this year" may be a cause for concern, according to T. Ranga Rao, Managing Director, Sachin Floritech, one of the companies located in the AEZ.

In just around 18 months, the AEZs have shown that the concept of dedicated agricultural export zones can work. Still, work needs to be done on creating support infrastructure-the focus thus far has been on convincing farmers about the existence of a market-and marketing. For instance, although APEDA is the coordinating agency, it has to work with several Central and state government departments on getting AEZs to fly. Maybe the government will step in and do its bit by the time Aggarwal finds a charter.

-additional reporting by Debojyoti Chatterjee, Dipayan Baishya, Nitya Varadarajan, and Venkatesha Babu