What is the issue?
- ‘World Food India’ conference is being organised by the ‘Ministry of Food Processing’ in partnership with the ‘Confederation of Indian Industry – CII’.
- Over 200 companies worldwide, 18 government delegations, many domestic CEOs and state representatives are attending it.
What did the PM say?
- PM Modi inaugurated the conference and spoke at length about the opportunities available for the food industry in India.
- Having the world’s second-largest arable land area and 127 diverse agro-climatic zones, India has a natural advantage in the sector.
- While Private sector participation has been increasing in many segments of the food value chain more is required in contract farming and raw material sourcing.
- There is a clear opportunity for global supermarket chains to consider India as a major outsourcing hub.
- States have been urged to come up with attractive food policies to win investments and develop specialisations in select products.
What were the ideas for increasing nutritional value?
- Aerated drink majors were asked to consider blending 5% of fruit juice in their products to increase nutritional value.
- Food majors were asked to explore the opportunities offered by the railways were over 1 million meals are served daily.
- Apart from post-harvest management, the immense potential in niche areas such as organic and fortified foods was pointed out.
- Promoting traditional foods such as coarse grains due to their “nutrition-rich and climate-smart” nature was suggested.
- The capability of India’s long food tradition to blend taste with nutritional value was elaborated.
- Along with modern technology, processing and packaging, this can help the world overcome lifestyle diseases.
What are the Schemes on the avail?
- Farmers are central to food processing industry and ‘Pradhan Mantri Kisan Sampada Yojana’ has helped streamline this.
- The scheme envisions an investment of $5 billion for promoting food processing, cold storages and other infrastructure.
- It is expected to benefit 2 million farmers and generate more than half-a-million jobs over the next 3 years.
- Under the scheme 9 ‘Mega Food Processing Parks’ are already operational and and more than thirty others are coming up.
How does different sectors look?
- Dairy sector is vital area the rural economy, increasing and diversifying the product profile in the sector is being worked on.
- India currently ranks sixth in production and export of honey is heading towards a sweet revolution.
- Indian fisheries products are exported to about 95 countries and a a big leap through the envisioned ‘blue revolution’ is awaited.
- Current focus is on development of untapped areas, such as ornamental fisheries (pearls) and trout farming.
- Functional infrastructure for organic food production also exists in the vast stretches of the northeast states – a path to sustainability.
Source: The Hindu
