Organic vegetables for Infy, Wipro staff
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 04 September 2010, 18:13 IST   |    3 Comments
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Organic vegetables for Infy, Wipro staff
Bangalore: Infosys and Wipro are in talks with International Competence Centre for Organic Agriculture (ICCOA), a Bangalore based NGO for the supply of organically grown vegetables to their canteens, which they will use in their canteens soon. ICCOA helps the farmers to market their produce and sell organic vegetables through various outlets in Bangalore as they have recently tied up with Safal, a unit of Mother Dairy Foods Processing. "Presently, there are 450 farmers registered with us who are growing organic vegetables and we are in the process of providing them market linkages. We have just tied up with Safal and are in dialogue with other retail chains like Spencer's and Food World. We have also had preliminary talks with Infosys and Wipro for supply to their canteens in Bangalore," said Sunil Kumar S, principal consultant, Aum Consulting, a Chennai-based consultancy firm and director of ICCOA. With the help of ICCOA, farmers have formed three groups in Devanahalli, Doddaballapur and Chikkaballapur. These farmers supply 3.5 tonnes of organic vegetables to Safal everyday, which are sorted, graded, cleaned and packed for sale in their 22 outlets in Bengaluru. The daily capacity will be scaled up to 10 tonnes in two months. The organic products' business is estimated to be worth 450 crore ( 4.5 billion) in India of which exports account for 350 crore ( 3.5 billion). Manoj Menon, Executive Director, ICCOA, said they were also in dialogue with state-owned Horticultural Producers' Cooperative Marketing and Processing Society (Hopcoms) for supply of organic vegetables. "I have spoken to the director of horticulture department and he has promised to identify select half a dozen outlets in Bangalore city for launch of organic vegetables," he said.