What has been hitherto considered as the poor man’s fruit, Indian bananas set to go global, fetching multi-crores of rupees to the Indian exporters and in turn India’s foreign exchange, thereby boosting India’s economy.
Indian bananas are set to become the flavor of the world. Maharashtra based contract farming farm, Desai Fruits and vegetables(DFV) has signed a multi-crore deal to export bananas to a group of traders of West Asian countries.DFV is also in talks with retail chains in the European Union countries and Japan.Tha company has already flagged off its first consignment, on Sunday to Jeddah, UAE based Sharbatly Fruit Company.
At present DFV has more than 2,500 acres of landunder contract farming of which 880 acres is under banana cultivation.In the next three years, DFV plan to ramp up banana cultivation to 10,000 acres with over 2,500 farmers working on it, said Ajit Desai, the head of DFV.
At present India’s banana export is very small, despite of the fact that India is the largest producer of banana in the world, accounting for 23 % of worlds’ banana production. Over 5 lakh small and medium farmers are involved in human cultivation and about one third of India’s fruit production is by bananas alone.
Banana exports has been an area of concern for commerce ministry. Government has asked APEDA, in collaboration with National Horticulture Mission to take up the creation of storage, pack house and cold storage infrastructure in key banana cultivation clusters with export potential. Similar facilities will be created in important importing countries as well, as has been created by APEDA for flowers in Rotterdom and is being being planned in Dubai and Tokyo soon.
Globally, in terms of volume bananas are the most exported fruit, while they rank second after citrus fruit, in terms of value.Only one fifth of the total banana produced is internationally traded.
In the wake of the thrust given to the banana export by the commerce ministry, perhaps, say in a year or two,a poor man in India may wonder why a banana has become so dear to him in terms of its retail price.