Food processed is food saved: Harsimrat Kaur Badal

Amritsar, November 8, 2014: Union food processing industries minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal today virtually brought the Food Processing Industries Ministry to food bowl of India by organising an interactive session with the MLAs of Punjab here today. Highlighting, focusing, directing, divulging personally into the details of the policies during the presentation made for the purpose, the minister not just laid threadbare all nitty-gritty’s of the projects but her effort spoke volumes about her sincerity to give utmost to her home State.

The minister claimed that beginning from Punjab, she would cover all the agro-states nationwide and sensitise elected reps/officers to avail maximum out of the food processing industry.

While addressing the gathering, Harsimrat Kaur Badal said, “There is an urgent need to take processing to the farm level.” She opined that "Food processed is food saved,"  adding, over Rs 40,000 crore worth of food is wasted, most of it during harvesting and transport. Badal said that the rate at which India's population is growing - at 1.5 per cent per year, the food consumption demand is likely to go up three times in another few years. With agricultural land shrinking, growing more food from less land to feed more people is a huge challenge. There are huge opportunities for the food processing sector, which will play a key role in addressing these challenges.

 She said that "Due to wastage of food, the market availability declines and it directly leads to inflation. So if we control wastage by taking help of food processing industry, we can control inflation,"

Giving details of various projects Directly Financed by the ministry and the Centrally sponsored Projects she said that the ministry extends subsidies to the tune of Rs.50 crore for Mega Food Park to Rs 5 lac for a meat shop. She said that the Scheme of Mega Food Park aims at providing a mechanism to link agricultural production to the market by bringing together farmers, processors and retailers so as to ensure maximising value addition, minimizing wastage, increasing farmers’ income and creating employment opportunities  particularly in rural sector. The Mega Food Park Scheme is based on “Cluster” approach and envisages a well-defined agri/ horticultural-processing zone containing state-of-the art processing facilities with support infrastructure and well-established supply chain.

Similarly, the objective of the scheme of Cold Chain, Value Addition and Preservation Infrastructure is to provide integrated cold chain and preservation infrastructure facilities without any break from the farm gate to the consumer. It covers pre-cooling facilities at production sites, reefer vans, mobile cooling units as well as value addition centres which includes infrastructural facilities like Processing/Multi-line Processing/ Collection Centres, etc. for horticulture,  organic produce, marine,  dairy, meat and poultry etc. Individuals , Groups of Entrepreneurs ,Cooperative Societies, Self Help Groups(SHGs), Farmers Producer Organizations (FPOs),NGOs, Central/State PSUs etc. with business interest in Cold Chain solutions are eligible to  setup integrated cold chain and preservation infrastructure and avail grant under the Scheme. The Scheme shall provide a capital grant -  50% of the total cost of plant & machinery  and technical civil works in general areas. The Scheme provides a maximum grant of Rs. 10 Crores per project.

The minister also advocated the creation of primary processing centres to take the food processing mission to the village level. She said cooperatives would be encouraged to take advantage of grants up to Rs 2.5 crore each to create modern processing centres for milk, fruit and vegetables.

The Centre-sponsored schemes for enhancing farm processing are also available, added the minister.

In addition, she suggested the use of a “Reeper van” which collects the farm produce from the farmers for processing. Badal further said her ministry also gives grants for setting-up testing laboratories

Other initiatives of her ministry include Rs 2,000 crore special fund to provide affordable credit to agro-processing units, help desk “Investors portal” to assist prospective investors to facilitate investment in food processing sector, skill development in seven sectors to train 10,000 people  and drawing food maps of the country to identify areas of surplus raw material for processing.

Harsimrat said the government would approve 17 food parks across the country over the next few months.

Among other projects, she said, her ministry would also give grants for setting up modern abattoirs in all the major cities in Punjab. She said these abattoirs would be managed by the municipal corporations. To further streamline meat production and maintain hygienic conditions, her ministry would provide grants up to Rs 5 lakh each to individual meat shop owners to create the requisite refrigeration facilities.

Earlier, Harsimrat Kaur was welcomed to the city by Bakshi Ram Arora, Mayor and Local Bodies Minister Punjab, Anil Joshi thanked her for the novel endeavor.

Cabinet Minister, Bikram Singh Majithia suggested appointing nodal officers at district level for prompt facilitation of the projects.

The interactive session was attended by a host of SAD-BJP MLAs, councilors and workers.

 

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