‘Farmers, youth need to learn potential of food processing’

Inaugurating the International Conference on Recent Advances in Food Processing Technology at the Indian Institute of Food Processing Technology (IIFPT), he said, the bumper production and diversification of agriculture has brought in new challenges for everybody in view of the large scale food wastage on one hand and seasonal and regional demand and there supply issues of many commodities. He also stated that the food processing sector in India has a dual structure. 

The unorganised segment dominates in numbers (about 25,00,000 in 2015-16) of small enterprises and workers, but the organised segment (about 40,000) dominates in terms of value of the output and investment. 

The percentage share of the organised/registered food processors are hardly 1.5 percent of the total food processors. 

The first tier technology should target the unorganized sector who can be encouraged to concentrate on primary processing and provide strong supply link to the high-end secondary and tertiary processing. 

The second tier should deal with sophistication of secondary and tertiary processing of high value products and enable industry to compete and stand up shoulder to shoulder with world food processing industries. 

He also quoted, our nation’s export basket of food produces contains 75 per cent of the fresh fruits and vegetables and unprocessed item and only 25 per cent of processed products. 

He also appreciated the continued efforts made by IIFPT in the field of research and food processing and extended Ministry’s support towards achieving the vision of the IIFPT to become an institute of national eminence.  

He concluded his inaugural address by sharing glimpses of the successfully conducted World Food India 2017 that subsequently promoted investment intent of 14 billion USD has been expressed through MoUs by country/world-wide companies. 

Bijaya Kumar Behera, economic advisor, MoFPI, K Parasuraman, MP, Thanjavur, Dr C Anandharamakrishnan, director, IIFPT were also present.