Food Processing Sector Holds Great Prospect to Increase Farmers' Income

Strengthening food processing sector is key to achieving government's aim to double farmers' income, union minister Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti said at an ASSOCHAM event.

"The government aims to double the farmers' income by 2022 but we won't be able to achieve that goal until we uplift and promote the food processing sector which is also important to provide pure food to consumers, create employment opportunities for people and provide fair price to farmers for their produce," said Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti while inaugurating ASSOCHAM National Conference on Cold chain technologies, convergence and capacity building.

She also said that government is working towards linking its objective of doubling farmers' income with the need to promote food processing industry and providing consumers with easy access to quality food.

The minister also informed that India got investments worth over Rs 31,000 crore in the 'World Food India,' held in November last year.

In her address, she further said that government had sanctioned setting up of 14 cold chains to be set up in Uttar Pradesh (UP) out of the total 40 applications received for setting up cold chain projects across states. Similarly, many states were also working on setting up cold chains.

Talking about her recent visit to Poland she said that Poland is quite keen to make its agricultural ties with India a lot more stronger and has even proposed to become a hub for exporting Indian mangoes in its part of the world.

Addressing the ASSOCHAM conference, Mr Pawnexh Kohli, chief advisor and CEO, NCCD (National Centre for Cold-chain Development Department) stressed upon the need to build backend farm gate aggregation points as though there are enough number of cold stores in India but it is due to dearth of infrastructure we are unable to transport farmers’ produce directly to markets.

B.B. Pattanaik, chairman, Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA) in his address talked about the need to promote capacity building in terms of creating requisite infrastructure and skill development.

Viney Khunger, managing director, Carrier Air Conditioning & Refrigeration Limited said that one-third of everything that is produced in India gets wasted as such there is need for setting up an effective and integrated cold chain infrastructure.