Reuters reports that India requires Wal-mart to source 30 percent of its goods from local, small industries, and therefore plans to sign up 35,000 farmers in the next three years:
Wal-Mart must buy in small batches from small plot-holders in a country where more than 80 percent of farms are under 2 hectares. That means contracting with thousands of farmers will still yield only a few thousand metric tons. In North America, retailers like Wal-Mart can buy from a few hundred farmers who provide hundreds of thousands of metric tons of produce between them.
