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Listening Window Odisha Knowledge Hub Lecture Series 85

scale farmers; farm equipment and fuel suppliers. There are 99 million small and medium scale
Worldwide, logistics alone create one third of farmers, 40 million informal SMEs and 15 million
the jobs in the agricultural sector. So agriculture formal SMEs in India. These 55 million SMEs create
departments need to be a composite structure more jobs in the agricultural sector than many
with inclusion of processing and logistics instead other sectors. Odisha has 0.8 persons employed in
of using fragmented approaches. This would
certainly encourage entrepreneurs. formal agri MSME against each small and marginal
farmer, whereas in Thailand, it is 5.6 against each
At policy level it needs to be understood that more small and marginal farmer. Thailand was at the
jobs would be created by transforming agriculture same level as Odisha fifteen to twenty years
into food processing than pure agricultural ago and has come up to the present level with
products. The other focus should be converting
informal enterprises into formal enterprises while investments in agribusiness entrepreneurship.
investing in creation of favourable ecosystem. He explained the job pathways worldwide, such as