PepsiCo's sweet taste of success
If all goes to plan, Florida's sweetest and juciest oranges will soon grow in Punjab. Farmers in the northern Indian state grow mostly wheat and rice. However, four decades of intense cultivation have led to a sharp drop in the underground water level and made the soil poorer. Because of this, the farmers joined with the state government and Pepsi Co of the USA to experiment with planting different varieties of citrus fruit from Florida and California, whose soil and weather are comparable with those of the Punjab.
For Pepsi Co and other Western food companies this kind of initiative is the key to long-term competitiveness in one of the world's fastest-growing consumer markets.
'The government wants diversification, the farmers want higher income, and the company wants local availability of citrus,' said PepsiCo India's executive director of exports.
A quarter of Punjab Slate's agricultural revenues could come from citrus by 2015, local officials estimate.
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