Pair turn agri-ambassadors

A pair of Indian undergraduates on a nine-week secondment to Wintec are to become ambassadors for New Zealand agribusiness when they leave for home tomorrow.

Dilip Patidar and Priyanka Chaturvedi, who are studying dual degrees in the agricultural and food engineering department at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, will share their newfound knowledge of New Zealand's agricultural and technological sectors with Indian businesses when they return.

Rajendra Singh, head of the agricultural and food engineering department at the Indian institute, said, during a visit last year, that the students who visited were "supposed to be the best in the world."

They are two of 500,000 who applied for courses at the Indian institute's 15 campuses. Only 8000 are successful every year.

They have visited everything from Waikato farms to Fonterra's processing plant at Te Rapa, including AgResearch and Waikato Innovation Park businesses, to learn about the New Zealand agricultural sector. They will take 30 business cards each back to India where they will act as unofficial ambassadors for the New Zealand companies they have visited.

Mr Patidar, 21, said different Waikato businesses had different expectations of them. "Gallaghers and Rezare Systems (at Waikato Innovation Park) asked us to find opportunities for their products in India," Mr Patidar said.

Miss Chaturvedi, who was impressed by the Indian flag which welcomed them at Hamilton herd improvement co-op LIC, said the biggest thing they could take back to India was artificial insemination technology.

"Only eight per cent of farmers use AI in India and in New Zealand it's about 95 per cent," she said.

Of India's 70 million farmers, about 52 million are small scale farmers with half a dozen cows. Only about 20 per cent of Indian milk is collected through small dairy co-operatives, with the rest being sold by farmers on an ad hoc basis for domestic consumption.

Both students also visited the National Agricultural Fieldays, last month, where they saw tractors ten times the power of those used in India as well as GPS guided planting equipment which Mr Patidar said could be put to use in India.

Both felt New Zealand agriculture's environmental problems were insignificant to India's, which is under-regulated, and felt information shared by the likes of Fonterra, DairyNZ and Environment Waikato around fertiliser inputs could be of use among Indian farmers.

"It's very bad in India but they are taking care of everything including education to farmers (in New Zealand)," Miss Chaturvedi said.

The pair are the first students to visit Wintec as part of an exchange programme in which Wintec students travel to India and more Indian students come here.

Wintec's research director, Dr Surya Pandey, has just returned from India after a secondment there and Steven Perdia, director of planning and enterprise at Wintec, expected ideas from Indian business to be piloted in Waikato because of the secondment, with the learning shared between the two countries.

- © Fairfax NZ News