Expressing concern over food produce going waste, the experts opined that lack of skilled manpower and shortage of infrastructure has been resulting in wastage of upto 40 per cent of the total food produce in India every year.
Discussing the issue during a conference at the national institute of food technology enterprenour and management (NIFTEM) in Sonipat, they felt the need to train skilled manpower of around 35 lakh persons in next seven years for the food processing industry besides creating the cold storage chains across the country to cut down the wastage of food including food grain, vegetables and other farm grown items.
Admitting the grave problem of wastage, minister of state for agriculture and food processing industries Tariq Anwar said that every year India faces a loss of Rs 50 thousand crores worth of both perishable and non-perishable food item. "After 1960, India went on to become a food surplus country from being a food deficit country but wastage has still not been brought under control.
To arrest this gross wastage, the government has taken various steps including training people and creating infrastructure", he said while responding to the TOI. The minister stated that FDIin the retail sector had been allowed with the conditions to invest 50 percent of the total investment in creating infrastructure like cold storages and processing units.
The experts also felt the need to set up more NIFTEM-like institutes to train the people as presently India has only two institutes- Institute of Crop Processing Technology in Thanjavur (Tamil Nadu) besides the NIFTEM. The NIFTEM vice chancellor Ajit Kumar informed that a project to set up 12 such institutes is awaiting the nod of the ministry.
"These institutes would provide technical knowhow and experts to this industry which has been registering immense growth rate which hovered around 15 percent even when the economic meltdown had hit other industries hard in past", he stated.
Rakesh Kacker, chancellor NIFTEM and Secretary Ministry of Agriculture said that food processing and management technology would not only save wastage of food articles but also profit the farmers and save them from the hand of the middlemen, who grab the lion share of the profit. He further added that in the 12th five year plan the centre would focus on value added education through the institute under which emphasis will be laid on better research program, patenting, commercialization and pure research in the field of food processing.
Sanjeev Chopra, chairman national horticulture mission stated that around 52 to 69 percent of farmers are in the unorganized sector and big land holding is decreasing day by day and hence organizing farmers through various farmers' producer organization and introducing modern scientific means to them can assist in the growth of the farming sector. During the conference, Chancellor of University of Nebraska Lincoln, US, Dr Harvey Pearlam signed an MoU with the NIFTEM for student exchange programme.
