The growing relevance and potential of the concept of supply chain in the arena of agribusiness has been accepted around the world. The first phase of the paper provides some glimpses on various existing international agribusiness supply chains. The second part depicts the existing agribusiness distribution practices in India along with their merits and demerits. This analysis shows the need for intervention of e-commerce to strengthen the vertical integration of the Indian agribusiness supply chain by providing the real time and relevant information with respect to weather forecasting, crop cultivation processes, post harvest technologies, water management, latest market price of crops and vegetables to the bottom line of the Indian agriculture. ITC e-choupal was the pioneering concept in India in this field. In this paper an attempt has been made to analyze, how the concept of e-choupal could be extremely beneficial for the paddy farmers in West Bengal (which is taken as a proxy measure) to increase the efficiency of the paddy supply chain and simultaneously increase the revenue of farmers in the absence of intermediaries.

India appears poised for an expansion of investment to modernize agribusiness including input supply, distribution and marketing, and food processing, despite the tardy pace of change in agricultural policy, trade and investment in the country. Significant investment opportunities are likely in the markets for both basic and high-value foods, where demand can be driven by rising incomes and price reductions achieved through increased integration and efficiency in the supply chain, according to Maurice R Landes of Economic Research Service under the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). But even under this scenario, the rice producers in West Bengal are fast becoming victims of state-level differences in the political control of agricultural cost structures and of coercive relations of exchange involving even more victimized producers elsewhere in India. Over the last two decades, a mixture of structural, political and market factors collectively with the products of second-generation technologies for the production, processing and preservation of staple food has turned the state from being deep in arrears to well into surplus. In West Bengal the production of rice has increased from 146.6 lakh tonnes in 2003-04 to an estimated 154.9 lakh tonnes in 2004-05 which is much higher than that of its total annual consumption, which is 134 lakh tonnes. So the net marketable surplus in paddy was estimated to be 20.9 lakh tones in 2005. According to Dr. Asim Dasgupta, Finance Minister, the state would continue to remain the leading rice producer among all other states in the country (www.thehindubusinessline.com). Yet a deep crisis is emerging from this success, one owing as much to politics and policies as to technologies and markets. Of and on the farmers are facing ruins, being chopped to pieces in a price scissors. The author searched an explanation of this situation from a preliminary fieldwork conducted in 2001 on the system of markets for rice in Birbhum and Bardhaman districts of West Bengal.

A Study on Agribusiness Supply Chains and the Intervention of E-Commerce in Indian Agribusiness, international, forecasting, crop cultivation, water management, market price, vegetables, paddy supply chain, food processing, agricultural policy, value foods, price reductions, Economic Research, rice producers, political, market factors, technologies, agricultural information, commission agent, procurement policy, food procurement, Food Department, market supply price, market price, rice millers,Food Corporation.