A Project Report On Farm to Fork Retail Yatra

Submitted to: Future Innoversity

Submitted by: Mehul Dhameliya Enroll No: 105273112

Year: 2010-2012

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The satisfaction and gratitude that go together with the successful Completion of any work be incomplete without mentioning of the people, whose competent guidance and encouragement serve as inspirational light to help along the path of success. Firstly, I express my gratitude to Mr. K.C.Kurien, Dean of Future Innoversity & Mrs. Punita Gibson, for giving me valid opportunity to undertake this project. It also gives me immense pleasure to thank Mrs. Asha Nambiar (Academic co-coordinator) who was with me throughout the tour. I would like to express my thanks to Mr. Anand, who provided us with necessary guidance during the tour. I express special thanks to the entire Bangalore FHDL team, who provided their Inputs and suggestions to complete my project successfully & made our Bangalore visit a memorable one. I particularly like to extend my thanks to my seniors and my friends who supported me during the project.

Date: Place: Ahmedabad

Mehul Dhameliya

Project Summary
My Project Commenced on 4th Jan, 2012 at Bangalore where I started my Retail Yatra by visiting various farms . Farmers in (chikkaballapura) were kind enough to let us know the entire process of producing farm products like brinjals, cauliflower, capsicum, Bitter Gourd, tomato, etc.. Under the able guidance of Bangalore Team I was able to understand all the nuances of farm retailing which are only understood by seasoned campaigners. Retail Practioners at FCC & CC also helped me a lot by sharing their learnings & experience in managing retail chain of farm products. During the course of my project I also visited local markets for fruits & vegetables. I can say that, I was quite lucky to experience such an exciting environment of Mandis. Basically this project was concerned with the farm produce, Backend operations and Buyers profile while placing orders to vendors & farmers.

Table Of Content

No.
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6 7 8 9 10

Particular
Introduction To Retail Yatra Significance Of The Study Objectives Of The Study Scope Of The Study Methodology Retail Farm Chain Wholesale & Retail Market Learning Conclusion Bibliography

Page No.
5 6 7 8 9 10 16 17 18 19

Introduction To Retail Yatra

Retail Yatra is a study tour designed for MBA Retail students to enable practical learning of Retail industry. To enable this learning a student should spend time understanding the working of retail in local and traditional markets. Students should also understand the life cycle of products be it apparel or food item in a retail scenario. By these retail tours students will also understand the emphasis of learning through observation, by doing and being with the customer. By spending quality time on visiting markets students can pick up some insights which can be further build into a contemporary Retail practices to attract customers. Also, I would like to interact with people and communities along with manufacturers, producers, intermediaries, sellers, buyers etc. so, that I develop and understanding of the overall ecosystem and not necessarily a category or product. It will help to interact with the people and communities along with the manufacturers, producers, intermediaries, sellers, buyers etc so that we can understand overall ecosystem. It will helps to know what are cultures, customs, belief systems, food habits, occupations, socio cultural pattern, consumption pattern, and industrial growth of that place. So retail yatra is all about getting practical knowledge of real life retail industry. And through this retail yatra I personally learnt so many things about the farm to fork process of retail store.

Significance of the Retail Yatra

Providing practical life exposure of retail industry.

It helps in to find out clear and depth process of farm fresh in store.

Aware of modern & traditional supply chains of farm products. We also find out the reality of farmers, and agriculture business in India and culture of the city.

We understand that How farmer work into their farm and what their responsibility towards their farm.

How to dealing with vendors, farmers, colleagues. To know about consumption pattern of the city and their culture. Providing knowledge of fresh farm products from seeding to harvesting.

It helps Community study on the workers involved in manual labour of loading/unloading. Understand Activities in Consolidation Center- sorting, grading, weighing, packing, transporting.

Finally it gives idea about whole process of farm to fork.

Objectives of Retail Yatra

Getting practical life experience. By this retail yatra tours students will also understand the emphasis of learning through observation, by doing and being with the customer, by spending quality time on visiting markets student can pick up some insights which can be further build into contemporary retail practices to attract the customers. Another objective of this Retail yatra was to understand the whole process starting from how to place order to consolidation centre and ending with receiving fruits and vegetables to shelves.

Scope of the Retail Yatra

Farm to Fresh Project Started on 4th Jan 2012, on this day we visited several farm in the (village name) of Bangalore. This farm visit took around two to three hours during which we went through various farms of Brinjals, Capsicum, and Bitter Gourd Etc. During that time students also interacted with farmers & vegetables vendors which were extremely fruitful to students.

And We interact with farmer. We had queries so we asked to farmer and they solved our problem.

Farm fresh consist of products which are easily consumable and are part of basic necessities of humans. Products of farm fresh are the once which customer prefers to buy every day.

Farm to fork is an importance category of any store, as the product here are everyday saleable. No one buys apparels; shoes etc daily but vegetable and fruits are brought daily. The presence of this category gets customer walk-in daily.

Methodology of Retail Yatra

There are various methods of learning. In this retail yatra project I have learnt various things related to retail farming by observations as well as practical experience. We analysis process of seeding to harvesting vegetables and fruits from various farm. Analysis the life cycle of fruits or vegetables. Observed quality/benchmark of that product. In Farm Consolidation Centers(FCC) we found actual buying from farmers. In FCC we found specific barcode, quality control, and fCC reported to Consolidation Centers. We visited huge vegetable, fruit and flower market. We observed Processing stages of farm fresh products sorting, cleaning, weighing, packing, transporting in Consolidation Center(CC). According to each store requirement CC will provide and fulfill the requirement.

Retail Farm Chain

Farming process

End users

Food Collection Center (FCC)

Organised retail store

consolidati on center (CC)

1) Farming Process:

This process first and one of the basic fundamental of the farm to fork concept. Farming is very tough and crucial process. Where farmers produced different kind of vegetable and fruits like brinjal,bittergourd, cabbage, tomato and Mango, banana, pear, etc. India is known as agricultural country and more than 60% people are in the business of farming in rural and urban area and produced so many things according to demand of the consumer and particular fertility of the land and it also afeected along with whether of the particular area or places.

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Lets take example and understand the process.

Basically farmer sow seeds of particular vegetable or fruits in his land as per the forecasting demand or sometime it happened that farmer do work on contract based for the particular company or retailer and as per their requirement farmers produced stuff. Here farmer takes lot of consideration in his mind during produsing different stuff as per the product For example:- In a crop like brinjal first farmer has to nurture basic plant in specific method and after certain time period he sow in his land, basically it is known as tissue culturing process where first seeds are nurtured in laboratory than in plant nursery and than further process taken care by the farmer.

2) Farm Consolidation Centers (FCC):

In farm consolidation center we learn about that actual buying happened for store, In this also done sorting, cleaning, weighing, transporting In farm consolidation centre mainly loading/unloading activities happened. It is the place where all farmer sell their farm fresh products. It is a reversed process like according to customer requirement a retailer estimate future demand and forecast sales and processing order to CC and CC gives order to FCC and FCC getting those order from various farmers and fulfill the demand. Once products are received, it is sorted accordingly. While sorting it is made ensured that damaged products sure removed outside and return to farmer.

Sorting:
Sorting identifies the quality of Best, good, bad and Worst after completed process of sorting weighting done. As per their standard quality check of fruits and vegetable then goods send to CC.

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Weighing:
In everyday practical usage, including commercial usage, the term "weight" is commonly used to mean mass, which scientifically is an entirely different concept In farm consolidation center after sorting, cleaning, weight are done for particular vegetables or fruits. Also there are some costly goods are counted in individual numbers.

Transporting:
It is play an important role in farm fresh product. farm consolidation center send farm fresh product to consolidation center. In FCC there are loading/unloading activity mainly happened.

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In that whole process Supply Chain play an important role to running farm to fork process smoothly and systematically.

Price negotiation: Farmer-Retailer

Negotiate with farmer is very important to every retailer to running business with cost efficient. All the farmers and retailers get together in the market for pricing of the vegetables and fruits. Many times retailers decide prices when they get better products and effective rate. Farmers get agreed to sell their products when they get better deal by retailers and competitive price rates. Farmers and retailers become agree to do a purchase and selling when they full-fill individuals requirements and agreements. Many times they have quality negotiation and price negotiation between them under certain term and condition.

3) Consolidation Centre:
Retailers place their orders to consolidation centre and as per the orders; it gives orders to F.C.C. as well as other vendors to get the required farming products of retailers. In our retail yatra, we have been to C.C. also which covers 16 stores of Bangalore as well as some stores of Chennai. First products are received at C.C. While receiving the products, they verify it with the help of invoice which they get from F.C.C. All the products come in different forms such as packets, quantity, bunch and kilograms. And packing in a attractive manner.

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Packing:
In FCC after weighting of farm fresh product. They packing specified vegetables and fruits.

Once fruits and vegetables are packed in an attractive manner, they are kept in allocated sites for transfer. And finally they are sent to the respective stores in that night as well.

4) Retail Store:

Stores receive the fruits and vegetables as per their requirements within 2 days from the date of placing order to C.C. While receiving products from C.C. it is duty of warehousing department to check its quality and quantity as per the invoice received from C.C. After receiving products from CC warehouse departments the vegetables are displayed in attractive for sale in store and Products on the floor are placed as per the demand of the customers.

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5) End Users:

At the end a final finished and well packing products sale to the end users or end customer to the retail store.

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Visit of wholesale market and retail market

During our retail yatra project we visited various mandis like fruits, vegetables & flowers. It was really amazing experience in wholesale mandis. There was no space to walk in mandis. Mandis were full of farming products and dealers. Normally farmers directly deal with the vendors in mandis. Mandis start early morning at 4 oclock. All the trading activities between farmers and vendors start early morning every day.

Retail market is a place where farming products are directly sold to end user. Retailers buy fruits and vegetables from mandis in bulk and then sell them to customers. Retailers are getting more benefits in terms of profits since they buy in bulk. We had visited one big bazaar family centre in Bangalore where we had seen how stores keep the fruits and vegetables in shelves to attract more customers.

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Learnings
I have learnt so many things during this retail yatra. Each and every day I got new learning. I have come to know about farming in retail industry. I would like to special thanks to my college who has given us such a wonderful opportunity to get the real life retail exposure. My learning from this project are:-

I have learnt actual farming processes by visiting various farms during the retail yatra
from the first day of retail yatra.

Understood the whole farming process from interacting with farmers as well as
observing farms and its various processes.

I have also learnt how farming products are received at F.C.C. from farmers, how do
farmers decide their prices and so on. At F.C.C. I had taken practical experience by getting involved in loading and unloading trucks.

Leant about how farmers are prepared with their fruits and vegetables during that time
they face a lot of problem then they earn money.

Attracting way of packaging at C.C level. Whole role of supply chain in farm to fork process.

Maintaining farm fresh product items at retail store level is very critical and how retail
store deals with these is very important.

So finally how farm to fork whole process done that I learnt.

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Conclusion

Basically this project report is on how the farm products like vegetable and fruits reached to the end customer via farmer, FCC, CC, and store and what are the major functions involved in this whole process. So finally we conclude over here is how backward process of the retail store take place and how a fresh fruits and vegetable flow from farm to end customers.

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Bibliography

www.google.com www.wikipedia.com

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