CASE STUDY - AGRICULTURE BUSINESS MANAGEMENT

1. Bai Bai Agriculture pvt ltd is a venture promoted by Dr. Seema and has a Mango grove near Tirupati. It is basically a ten acre farm with some twenty full time employees with an export office in Mumbai  handled by Mr. Kaalia who has more than twenty years of experience in Import /Export.

The farm has been exporting Andhra variety of mangoes for nearly five years to South American countries like Peru and Brazil and also to countries like Australia and Indonesia. The customers were happy as these mangoes almost sold instantly in the fruit markets around these countries. The profits were high and even the Governmental agencies were happy.

But earlier this year the company got a letter from the embassies of most of these countries that some 10% of the mangoes were giving a pungent taste and also the color of these mangoes were becoming purple after some time. The company first thought the problem was happening in the containers during export but Dr.Triboovan ( a Japanese expert) detected traces of nickel in the specimen mangoes that were sent to him.

Water is pumped into the grove from a canal that is linked to the nearby river and investigations revealed that an electroplating unit started recently was dumping their waste into the canal periodically which was high in nickel content and the nickel content in the Mango could be traced to this.

Dr Seema is a worried person now as the next export consignment is due in another six months. A letter to the Electroplating company regarding this matter went unanswered and the  Electroplating company demanded proof of contamination to effluents from their plant. The electroplating plant is also pleading helplessness as there is no other drain for its effluents and the demand for electroplating is so high due to increase in industrial manufacturing around that electroplating cannot stop even for a day.

Answer the following questions;

1.      Could this problem have been foreseen by the Agri company?

2.      As an immediate measure should the Agri company focus on some new International markets for its mangoes.

3.      Do you think some new kind of fertilizer can arrest this problem.

4.      Should the company look for some new sources of Water?

5.      What should be the role of Govt   bodies in such cases?

6.      What short term and long term solutions would you suggest?