Alignment with new marketing realities in Agriculture

Recently one of our Senior advised me to read a book name “Marketing Management” by Philip Kotler. In starting of the book, writer have mentioned 3 new realities of marketing ie Technology, Globalization and Social responsibilities.  In technology segment marketers were expected to explore the technology in giving solutions to customer’s problems. Under globalization segment marketers are expected to use their successful initiatives of one area into another and in social responsibility they are expected to capitalize their social responsibility efforts into improving relations and ensuring customer delight. Further in this book author have mentioned that each staff of the organization is a marketer whether he is from sales or back office. He represents his organization irrespective of any dept. he works.

Although above facts are not new. However, my approach of handling such issue was little different after reading it. When I was on tour to my home town in last week, I got an opportunity to visit my wheat fields too. Beside of wheat there were crops of mustered, peas and onions too. In wheat field I observed some weeds which had spread across the whole crop area. Length of this weed was more than wheat.

If you see the above image carefully, you will find that earrings of this weed is on top of wheat earrings. This weed is called phalaris minor, in local language it is called “Jaee”. At initial stage its plants look similar to wheat plant.

In our village peoples are scared of using pesticides in crops. They feel it dangerous for the health of human being, animals and birds. So few used to weed-out it manually. Although for most of the farmers it is not possible since availability of manpower is a challenge now a day due to excessive migration of labours to cities. So these weeds remains as is in the fields. It utilized the fertilization capacity of the field without having any use. As a result, wheat crop also gets lesser fertility share from field, which results into lower productivity. Max to max this weed may be used as fodder for animals but extracting it manually damages the wheat crop also.

Looking upon disadvantages of unwanted weeds, I asked few of neighbors why they don’t use the weedicide to remove it? They had different reasons mixed in their myths. Few persons were genuinely not aware about specific products which can help them in getting rid of this problem. From this response it is clear that agro-chemical companies like us have still to do much more to penetrate the virgin markets. Although this is not much difficult since most of the peoples have smart phones in villages too and they have access to social media platforms. So by identifying the target customer base we can address it. We have necessary technology, experience in this field and off-course social presence so we can do much better. However, it needs collective efforts from our all segments.

Few farmers had myth that cost of pesticide is much more than labor charges. Although I was not well prepared at that time but later on I collated the information and found it away from real facts. If we use any good wheat weedicie, then cost per acre will come approx..Rs.700/. Whereas cost of manual extracting was above Rs.1500/ (five man days @Rs.300/day). However, few farmers were supporter of organic model of agriculture but, they did not had solution to this weed. When we informed about our eco-friendly products they also became ready to use it.

When many peoples became ready to use then I called one of our veteran to consult, about way forward. Then we got to know that at this stage of crop use of weedicide is not recommended since wheat crop as well as phalaris minor both are near to harvesting stage. Agro-chemicals are used at the time of 2^nd irrigation. So despite our efforts it remained as missed opportunity. However it's a lesson that if we remain in marketer mode always then we can add value at everywhere. So its not missed opportunity but a platform for new opportunity. 

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