The Future Agriculture Leaders of India (FALI) program, which is transforming the future of Indian agriculture and agro-enterprise, has just completed its eleventh year with huge expansion plans for the next ten years.
On April 27 to May 4, the FALI 11 Convention will be held at Jain Hills, Jalgaon, hosted by Jain Irrigation. Over 1,100 FALI students will be participating along with their 80 FALI Agriculture Educators, and over 50 top and senior managers from the ten companies which supported FALI 11. These FALI students are winners of the school level business plan and agtech innovation contests in the 180 schools participating in FALI 11.
FALI now operates in four major agricultural states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with expansion plans to at least three more large states in the next ten years.
This year, over 15,000 FALI 8th and 9th standard students in government aided rural schools participated in interactive classes on agronomy, livestock, agtechnology, agro-enterprise and agri-finance. Dealing with climate change is treated in all modules. FALI students have interactive, hands-on sessions throughout the academic year with top FALI Agriculture Educators. They do practicals and build businesses in the shade nets at every school. They do field trips to modern farms and leading agro-enterprises and get access to cutting edge innovation through webinars and videos with industry leaders. And they prepare business plans and agtech innovations.
Over 90% of FALI students and their parents say that FALI has transformed their attitudes toward a future in agriculture and agro-enterprise. Most students come from subsistence farm families. Over 90% of FALI students and parents say that FALI students have gotten the technical, business and leadership skills which they need to succeed in agriculture and agro-enterprise. Many FALI students and alumni bring improved methods home to their family farms as they build a future in modern, sustainable agriculture.
FALI now has over 45,000 alumni and aims to have 250,000 by 2032. FALI has active alumni programs, including internships, scholarships and seed funding for agro-ventures. Companies sponsoring FALI alumni internships give them high marks in evaluations, with over 90 percent saying that FALI interns outperform normal company interns and that the companies would like to hire most of the FALI alumni interns. Fifteen FALI alumni will be joining the FALI 11 Convention. Most are pursuing higher education while having built an agro enterprise or a modern farming operation.
Almost all FALI alumni complete their secondary education and over 60% pursue higher education, mainly in science, engineering and agriculture, while continuing to introduce improvements to their family farms.
With FALI now having eleven years of impact in rural India, FALI introduced a new program in leading urban schools last year, FALI e+ with the objective of making agriculture and agro-enterprise attractive to the next generation, build needed rural-urban connections, and build a fee based revenue stream to support rapid growth in the FALI program in rural India.
FALI e+ students who participated in the FALI 10 Convention last year left the FALI Convention deeply impressed with the technology used in Jain Irrigation’s production of 130 million tissue culture plants a year. These top urban students were even more impressed with the quality of the business plans and agtech innovations presented by rural FALI students in the contests at the FALI Convention.
After participating in FALI e+ this year, these same urban students were more excited than ever, as they had been exposed to leaders in agribusiness and agro-enterprises through webinars and videos, had access to cutting edge innovations through FALI e+ Booklets on everything from hydroponics to the strawberry value change to agtech entrepreneurship to managing and mobilizing finance. And this year, at the FALI 11 Convention, FALI e+ urban students from top schools will be competing in the business plan and agtech innovation contests with top rural FALI students, winners of their school level business plan and agtech innovation contests.
What FALI is demonstrating is that, if students are given access to interactive learning, technology, business knowhow and cutting-edge innovation, they can work together to transform Indian agriculture and agro enterprise, and that urban youth can be part of that process.
FALI 11 has the backing and active engagement of ten leading agribusinesses and financial institutions: Jain Irrigation, Godrej Agrovet, UPL, StarAgri, Omnivore, Tata Rallis, ITC, Prompt DairyTech, SBI Foundation, and Ujjivan Small Finance with more agribusinesses and banks committed to backing FALI in FY2025/26. .
The board members of the Association for FALI are pushing for more. Anil Jain, Vice Chairman & CEO of Jain Irrigation, says we have to build these rural and urban linkages, to create businesses that serve the needs of farmers and consumers. Nadir Godrej says we have got to keep building the FALI alumni programs, especially the internships, to keep encouraging young people on fire in FALI to pursue agriculture and agribusiness as their life’s work. Rajju Shroff, Chairman of UPL, says that these young leaders will transform productivity in Indian agriculture and address the challenges of climate change. Nancy Barry says these young people are on fire; let’s keep it burning.
Harsh Nautiyal, the General Manager of FALI from the outset in 2014, says the model works. We need to continue improving the content and reach of our FALI and FALI e+ programs, and back more FALI alumni in transforming Indian agriculture.
Two hundred and fifty thousand FALI alumni by 2032 is a small number relative to the Indian population. It is a very large number of leaders transforming Indian agriculture.
