Green Innovation Centres for the Agriculture and Food Sector: India

The “Global Programme Innovation Centres for the Agriculture and Food Sector, India” is part of the special initiative “A World Without Hunger”, which aims to pro-mote modernization and professionalization of the agri-food industry in 13 countries, amongst them India. In India, the national agriculture and food industry cannot take advantage of the existing huge market potential due to technical and organizational obstacles. Farm enterprises and food processing businesses do not have access to the necessary innovations required to improve their income and employment opportunities, as well as regional food security.


The programme aims to support innovations in agriculture and the food industry, to help improve income of small farms, increase employment in the agriculture and food sector and increase regional food supply in selected states of India.


The Consortium AFC/DLG has been tasked to carry out the programme module focusing on supporting the priority value chains tomatoes and potatoes in the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. The involvement of German, international and Indian companies in the agri-food industry is used as leverage to disseminate innovation at various levels of the value chain.


The focus of the module lies on the following areas of intervention :

  • value chain promotion by innovation development and dissemination,
  • promoting partnerships within and along WSK,
  • establishment of and support to knowledge and learning systems for the agri-food industry.


Services provided include, but are not limited to:

  1. Support the identification and implementation of innovations in agricultural smallholdings
  2. Support processing and marketing companies in their entrepreneurial capacity and their capacity to provide (embedded) services to smallholder farmers
  3. Build capacities of extension service providers to further develop and disseminate agricultural innovations; provide training and consulting to strengthen farmers’ and entrepreneurs’ skills in order to sustainably increase productivity
  4. Promotion of cooperation among value chain stakeholders and knowledge management
  5. Project steering and M&E