Emerging Trends in Agro Processing Sector

Abstract

The theme received an overwhelming response from the scholars. As many as sixty-seven papers covering various aspects flagged in the guidelines circulated were received. These papers encompassed a wide range of commodities, pattern and pace of growth, structure and composition of processed agro-products, infrastructure and institutional domains, corporate dominance, co-operatives and contractual arrangements, import-export scenario and trends in the wake of liberalisation. There was also a general scattering in many papers about the improvements to be made and maintaining of quality standards so as to meet the requirement of the sanitary and phyto-sanitary governance systems. Five papers were published in full. The keynote paper was presented and the issues flagged therein were discussed. The paper-writers were given the opportunity to present the papers focusing on the issues being discussed. The researchers brought out with enthusiasm many recommendations based on their studies and field experiences. The discussions focused on the issues raised in the rapporteur’s report and the keynote paper presented. The agro-processing in general and food processing in particular has started gaining momentum. The total market of the value-added food products is assessed at about one-third of the total value addition in agro-processing, which is estimated at about Rs. 2,500 to Rs. 3,000 billion. This also has a large buffer of employment generation in the rural sector with a multiplier impact on the economy. The agroprocessing industry is concentrated in the unorganised sector with low science and technology input and heavily weighted in favour of low value-added products. It was pointed out that the new demand segment for high-value added agro-processed products is emerging at a fast rate, which needs to be appropriately exploited. The low productivity of the agro-processing sector remains the most crucial issue. It demands public investment and support for infrastructure and institutional improvements that would help to improve the productivity of the large number of small-scale agro-processing units, cut down their fixed costs and improve their profitability. The fact is that agro-processing is a vast house of small-scale enterprises, which has strong presence in the Indian economy. And in the rural economy of India, it simply dominates. There is a flip over from the negative to positive growth rate in the number of agro-based enterprises and employment as well